Apple TV owners report issues with exiting YouTube app

Posted:
in General Discussion
Some Apple TV set-top box owners have recently discovered a bug with the YouTube app on it, and it's not clear why or how it started.

Apple TV 4K
Apple TV 4K


Users have reported on Reddit and Twitter that when they exit the YouTube app in tvOS, it prompts them to confirm if they want to exit. It causes a black screen to appear, leaving users with no choice but to force close the app.

YouTube Support is recommending to some users that they can force-close an Apple TV app by double-pressing the TV button on the Siri Remote, navigating to the app, and swiping up on the trackpad. The official YouTube account recommends restarting the Apple TV and deleting and reinstalling the YouTube app to its latest version.

sorry for the trouble! if you haven't yet try restarting your device. deleting the app + reinstalling its latest version can also help

-- TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube)


Another workaround is to press and hold the Menu/Back button on the Siri Remote, instead of interacting with the YouTube app's prompt to exit. Or, press the TV button instead.

None of the workarounds appear to fix the problem, permanently, however.

I can't normally exit the @YouTube app on my Apple TV anymore. There's a new dialogue that asks if I want to quit the app. A positive answer leads to a black screen from which I can only force quit the app through the task manager. #onlyGoogle

-- Christian Raddatz (@speedlimiter)
It's not clear where the problem lies, in this case. Reports of the issues do not coincide with Apple's recent updates, and are concentrated over the weekend of December 10. For now, it appears the issue may be completely server-side, or a bug in the app induced by a change on how YouTube is serving data.

Read on AppleInsider
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 21
    Hello, yes, this started this weekend for me. I also found that exiting the app on Apple TV signed me out elsewhere. To reverse out of You Tube on Apple TV I use TV/Control Centre button.
    edited December 2022 urashidlolliverpscooter63
  • Reply 2 of 21
    I started to have issues with my HomePods and the YouTube app. When playing a video and after the first YT ad the sound stops playing on my HomePod stereo group, the video continues to play. I would have to either rewind or click out of the video or play it again. I restarted my HomePods, removed them from my Home app then went through the entire process again. The issue persists. It issue does not appear when using the TV's sound output. Weird
    lolliver
  • Reply 3 of 21
    Luckily I haven’t seen this yet. I only just recently thought of the ida to use the app because my computer is connected to my television and so I use YouTube that way. But I recently decided that I didn’t wat to periodically get up to terminate the ad anymore.

    I also remember a while back there was an issue where the Up Next row moved down to make room for a Featured row. I wonder if that was something that Apple tried and then decided to revert back. I never lost Up Next. It has always been in the top row and still is. I also wonder what they meant by Featured. My rows are Up Next, then What To Watch, Now on Apple TV+, Most Popular on Apple TV+, etc.
  • Reply 4 of 21
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,356member
    Thanks for the force kill advice. I ran into this problem over the weekend.

    Maybe YouTube finally got to the point where the run time of the injected ads exceeded the total run time of the video and they ran off the end of their buffer. The ratio of ads to content has become absolutely nightmarish over the past few months.
    pscooter63FileMakerFellerkingofsomewherehot
  • Reply 5 of 21
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    And I’ll bet those Reddit and Twitter users are blaming and trashing Apple for it too.
  • Reply 6 of 21
    It happened to my Apple TV also. Double clicking the remote helps get out of it. 
  • Reply 7 of 21
    Force quitting the app doesn't change anything for me.
  • Reply 8 of 21
    Started over the weekend for me, too.  ATV 4K, 1st gens all around.
    Yes, DewMe, ads are now so frequently intrusive that I really have to want to consume the content.  Casual views, goodbye.
  • Reply 9 of 21
    entropysentropys Posts: 4,163member
    Happened to me last night. I could not believe such a user unfriendly procedure.
  • Reply 10 of 21
    thttht Posts: 5,437member
    Have this problem too. Long press on the menu button gets me back to the Apple TV home screen.

    I thought it was the usual Goggle shenanigans, like with Chrome where you have to long press CMD-Q to quit Chrome.
    FileMakerFeller
  • Reply 11 of 21
    I found if you hold the "<" button down a bit, it will exit.
  • Reply 12 of 21
    I wonder if this is related to a black screen issue with the YouTube TV app that started happening a couple months ago?  When watching anything on YTTV, then turning everything off when done, when you come back and turn things on, the YTTV app has a black screen (normally, it would just start playing the channel it was last on).  Options are to force quit YTTV, or come out and go back into YTTV and wait (the app will force quit itself).  It hasn't been fixed yet and happens on all our Apple TV 4K boxes most of the time.  
    phinman
  • Reply 13 of 21
    I have the same issue when trying to exit HBO or Paramount+ apps.
  • Reply 14 of 21
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,356member
    jamnap said:
    I have the same issue when trying to exit HBO or Paramount+ apps.

    Hmm. This is starting to sound more like a tvOS bug.
    ITGUYINSDFileMakerFeller
  • Reply 15 of 21
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    dewme said:
    jamnap said:
    I have the same issue when trying to exit HBO or Paramount+ apps.

    Hmm. This is starting to sound more like a tvOS bug.
    Nope, I’m having no issues with any of these apps. Here we go again. And YouTube support is even inferring there’s an apparent problem on their end.
    Cesar Battistini Maziero
  • Reply 16 of 21
    It's not clear where the problem lies, in this case.
    Root cause analysis* suggests it's Google's attitude to coding, just like Microsoft's Mac software back in the 1990s.




    *otherwise known as "I made a guess and nobody else wants to do the work to prove me wrong"
    /s
  • Reply 17 of 21
    You can simply say “Siri, take me to the Home Screen.” using the Siri button on the remote. This works before or after the black screen for me.
  • Reply 18 of 21
    Yes so annoying! That and the no pip support for Apple need a fix ASAP.


  • Reply 19 of 21
    it does this on all 3 of my AppleTV's ... every other app works just fine (including HBO and Paramount+, Jamnap) ... pretty sure it's an issue with YouTube, not with the AppleTV.  It did NOT coincide with the latest TVOS update.

  • Reply 20 of 21
    Has been happening for at least a month now.  Have 5 ATV's in the house and all of them suffering from the same black screen.  If you can remember to back out of YouTube TV prior to turning off/sleeping the ATV, there is no issue.  Otherwise, force quit or go in and out of the app 4 or 5 times will also fix.  Would really like this to be fixed.
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