A report from 9to5 Google elaborates that it’s not the actual app that is causing the issue, but rather the exiting of the app. As in, navigating away via the Home or App Switcher buttons — or via navigation controls to the same effect — while watching content in full screen on YouTube or YouTube TV may cause this issue.
The result is an unresponsive Pixel 7 phone, which won’t allow you to do much other than restart. The screen goes dark, as if locked, but no amount of effort seems to be able to unlock it. Audio might continue to play, but you should be able to stop it through the power button.
Navigating away from other media players doesn’t produce the same result, but even despite that, this is more likely to be a system issue, rather than one related to the YouTube apps specifically.
What to do if Pixel 7 freezes in YouTube?
Odd to have an issue like this from an app that was released by Google on their own phone.
Overall, this is reminiscent of an issue that the Pixel 6 series, like the Pixel 6a, which started to have around the release of Android 13. The home screen basically disappears if the user exists apps with fullscreen playback or any other type of overlay. An easy fix to this was clearing the cache of the Google Launcher app itself, so this is something that you might also want to try.
As of now, Google hasn’t commented on the issue. If this is happening to you, you should certainly take a moment and send feedback to the Big G, so that they can address it in a quick patch.
