Chinese tech giant Xiaomi may have delivered bad news to many of its customers, as it has just revealed that it will be retiring a functionality found in both MIUI and HyperOS.

Bad news for anyone with a Xiaomi smartphone!

Xiaomi recently broke the news on its Mi Fans Telegram channel, as revealed by Android Authority, which will end an important job for many people. In practice, it allows devices with MIUI and HyperOS to play audio from YouTube videos even when the screen is off. However, the company indicated compliance requirements with this decision.

Xiaomi informed users in its post that it has removed the “Play video audio with screen off” function from the Video Toolbox and the “Turn Screen Off” function from the Gaming Toolbox in recent updates. These features arrived with MIUI 12.

Last year, Xiaomi replaced the traditional MIUI interface with a new operating system called HyperOS. Popular flagship smartphones running on HyperOS, as well as those still running on the older MIUI, suffer from this removal.

But what really caused this change?

According to the post, it's all about compliance requirements. The move appears to be in response to Google's crackdown on services that offer YouTube Premium features for free.

YouTube Premium, a monthly subscription service, provides users with exclusive benefits such as ad-free viewing, video downloading, and video playback in the background with other apps open or when the screen is off. With a competitor offering one of YouTube Premium's paid features for free, it's understandable that Google would have issues with this.

In other words, as I eventually realized, the disappearance of the new function is more Google's fault than Xiaomi's fault.