YouTube Tightens Controls on Sharing Premium Accounts Outside of Your Family
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If you watch enough YouTube, it’s worth considering a YouTube Premium subscription. It lets you watch videos without ads, download content for offline playback, and access YouTube Music Premium, though there are ways to bypass the ads and download videos without them. The standard subscription costs $13.99, but families can upgrade to Premium Family for $22.99 per month, which allows up to six accounts on one plan. You’ll need to make sure all those accounts are owned by people in your household, though.
This isn’t necessarily something new. According to Android Police , as of 2023, YouTube’s policy for its Premium Family plan is that all accounts must belong to the same “household.” This means that all users must live in the same household as the account owner. However, YouTube doesn’t enforce this rule. So account owners can add up to five other members to their Premium Family plans, regardless of where they live.
That’s changing. Android Police reports that YouTube is cracking down on Premium Family accounts that allow non-family members to use the subscription. What’s more, YouTube is reaching out to users who have signed up for a family plan that belongs to someone they don’t live with. The post reads:
To sign up for a YouTube Premium Family subscription, all members must be in the same household as the family manager. It looks like you’re not in the same household as the family manager, and your subscription will be paused after 14 days. Once paused, you’ll remain in your family group and be able to watch YouTube with ads, but you’ll no longer be able to access the YouTube Premium benefits.
It doesn’t look like YouTube is planning any large-scale enforcement yet, although this gives us an idea of how they’re handling this. Once they find your account isn’t compliant, they’ll give you two weeks of use and then suspend your subscription. You won’t be kicked out of your family group or be unable to watch YouTube, but you will lose all the benefits of a Premium subscription, including ad-free videos, downloads, and YouTube Music Premium.
Is it possible to bypass the YouTube Premium Family subscription ban?
Like other services with similar restrictions, YouTube runs a monthly “check” to make sure users live in the same household as the account owner. Every 30 days, the service checks to make sure you’re streaming from the same location. In theory, this should give you a way to trick YouTube’s registration system, but in practice, it may be more difficult.
You see, with services like Netflix , this monthly check-in isn’t necessarily automated. Instead, you just need to log into your account from home once a month to comply. So in September, you can take your iPad or laptop to the account owner’s place, stream a little bit, and be ready for October.
With YouTube Premium, however, it seems that signing up is automatic. Simply streaming from home every 30 days may not be enough: If the system detects that you’re away from home, it may mark your account as away.
YouTube doesn’t go into detail about how these checks actually work, so there’s nothing wrong with streaming from the account owner’s home to check if you’re compliant.