Ever since I updated my Android (Samsung) I can't access the Youtube app unless I clear Cache and data before. It won't let me enter the app before updating the Youtube app, but I CANNOT UPDATE IT.

Situation after clicking on the app:

"Update your app!"

Click link<

Reshuffled to Google Play

"Something went wrong"

I've tried updating youtube directly thought the Google play app to no avail. I've since updated my phone once with no improvement, and restarted the phone countless times. I've contacted both Google Play and Youtube Support, receiving only mindless autogenerated responses from Google Play, and no response from Youtube support.

I know I sound stupid, but I can't get anything to work, and I can't uninstall the apps just for the sake of it. Anybody know anything about this? (Also, no, I don't have an old phone model.) Anybody else with similar issues?

(My English is not up to par with tech lingo, and I'm sorry)

Let's say I make a fake google account to download apps, I log out of that account and disable playstore. When apps force me to update I enable playstore again, Do I need to log back in or can I update apps without the the need for a google account?

A bit over a year ago, I noticed that when I went to update my apps in the play store, a problem kept appearing with YouTube: "couldn't update". It was strange but ultimately didn't matter. This was until the last month or so, when YouTube required the user to update the app in order to access the main page. So in order to use the app, I need to update it, which I can't do.

What have I tried? First idea was to reinstall the app, but I can't do that because YouTube was preinstalled with Android. The next idea was to clear my cache and memory in the app. This did work, but only the first time I tried it. I closed the app, reopened it, and was back to where I was. Clearing cache/memory has not worked since then either.

So now I'm stumped, and I'm forced to use the browser version of YouTube. Google's help page is super shallow about this issue as well. Anyone have any ideas? Additionally, why could it be that the app isn't able to update?

I have done the root installation. I have searched for many posts but most of them are for non-root versions. Can anyone tell me the steps I need to follow for root version?

I was wondering if there is a way to update to the recommended version and keep all the settings of the patched app.

Cause as far as I know, I'd have to update the system youtube app to the recommended version, patch it, and install it again, which will overwrite my previous settings?

I installed the lasted recommended version on my fresh install of android 14 (custom rom of course, with nikgapps if it matters), and it auto-updated the app, losing the patches and what not. Auto update was off and still is, i had to double check because I made the mistake once. What gives? Did something change with google? I remember some script to separate the app from the play store back in the day but not sure if that's the silver bullet to do right now, as it had been working so far just disabling the auto update. If anyone encountered this and/or fixed already, let me know.

Edit: Since the response from the team, as you can see below, was vague and didn't offer an actual solution for the problem, I'm doing my part for root/magisk users: I'm using now the magisk module of revanced youtube with the detach module from github.com/j-hc/. It's not official, I can't guarantee it's safe. So far it hasn't updated itself, and it's working as expected. Which is what we all wanted right, no need to make a scene out of this.