YouTube Vanced Settings: A Guide to Every Option

Almost all YouTube Vanced settings live in one place: tap your profile picture in the top-right corner, open Settings, then choose Vanced Settings. This menu sits alongside YouTube's normal settings and is divided into sections for ads, layout, video, SponsorBlock, and miscellaneous tweaks. Theme selection is the exception. It is split between Vanced Settings and YouTube's own Appearance menu, which is where most of the confusion around the "white dark" toggle comes from.

Theme Settings: Black, Dark, White, and AMOLED

The theme system is the most searched part of the app, and also the most misunderstood. Vanced effectively has two separate theme controls that work together:

• Vanced Settings > Theme chooses between Dark (YouTube's standard dark grey) and Black (pure #000000, often called the AMOLED theme). Depending on the build, this was selected here or during installation in Vanced Manager.
• Settings > General > Appearance is YouTube's own switch between Light (white), Dark, and Use device theme.

The key point: the Black theme only shows up when the Appearance setting is on Dark. If Appearance is set to Light, the app stays white no matter what the Vanced theme option says. This is why so many people search for "youtube vanced white dark". They picked Black in one menu, still see a white app, and assume the setting is broken. It is not. The standard dark mode has to be switched on first, because the Black theme is an override applied on top of dark mode.

Why bother with pure black instead of regular dark mode? On AMOLED and OLED displays, a true black pixel is physically turned off. That means lower battery drain during long viewing sessions and deeper contrast in a dark room. On an LCD screen the backlight stays on either way, so the AMOLED theme is purely a cosmetic preference there. If you want the full background on how the theme compared to other headline features, the features overview covers it alongside the rest of the lineup.

Background Playback Settings

Background play, meaning audio that continues with the screen off or while you use another app, normally requires a Premium subscription. In Vanced it is controlled under Vanced Settings > Misc (labelled Enable background playback on most final builds), with some builds baking it in at install time via Vanced Manager.

Three practical notes for anyone still using the old app:

• Battery optimization can kill it. If audio stops seconds after the screen locks, exclude Vanced from your device's battery optimization list. Aggressive OEM power managers (common on Xiaomi, Huawei, and Samsung devices) suspend background apps by default.
• The notification player is part of the feature. When background play is active you get a media notification with play/pause and skip controls. If the notification never appears, the toggle is not actually taking effect.
• It can break without warning. Because the client is frozen, a YouTube backend change can stop background streaming at any time, and no patch will follow. Our background playback explainer covers how the feature works under the hood.

Picture-in-Picture (PiP)

Picture-in-picture shrinks the video into a floating window when you leave the app. In Vanced this depends on two things: the in-app PiP option under Vanced Settings > Misc, and Android's system-level permission at Android Settings > Apps > Vanced > Picture-in-picture. Both must be enabled. The in-app toggle does nothing if the OS permission is denied, which is the second most common "setting doesn't work" complaint after the theme confusion.

PiP and background playback interact: with background play enabled, leaving the app continues audio only, while PiP keeps the video visible in a floating window. Some users prefer to disable PiP entirely so that swiping home always drops to audio-only playback.

SponsorBlock Configuration

SponsorBlock is a community database of timestamped video segments (sponsor reads, intros, outros, self-promotion) that the app can skip automatically. Vanced integrated it under Vanced Settings > SponsorBlock, where you can:

• Enable or disable the integration globally
• Set per-category behavior: auto-skip, show a skip button, or ignore for sponsor segments, intermissions, outros, interaction reminders, and self-promotion
• Toggle the colored segment markers on the seek bar
• Show or hide the toast notification when a segment is skipped
• Enable voting and segment submission (requires a SponsorBlock user ID)

A sensible configuration for most people: auto-skip sponsor segments, show a button for intros and outros, and ignore the rest. Skipping depends on the public SponsorBlock API remaining reachable from the old client, though the settings menu will still open even if the service stops responding. Read more in our SponsorBlock glossary entry.

Playback Quality and Resolution Overrides

Stock YouTube decides resolution for you and buries manual quality selection behind extra taps. Vanced exposes defaults under Vanced Settings > Video settings:

• Default video quality: separate values for Wi-Fi and mobile data, so you can force 1080p at home while capping mobile streams at 480p to save data
• Default playback speed: start every video at 1.25x or 1.5x instead of adjusting manually each time
• Codec override (VP9/HDR options): on some devices, forcing or disabling specific codecs fixed stutter or unlocked higher resolutions the stock app refused to serve

Maximum available resolution is still decided server-side per video, so an override sets a preferred ceiling rather than forcing quality the stream does not offer. If high resolutions stopped appearing on an old install, that is typically YouTube's backend detecting the outdated client rather than a wrong setting.

Swipe Controls

Swipe controls turn the video player into a gesture surface: sliding a finger up or down on the left half of the player adjusts brightness, and the same gesture on the right half adjusts volume, the interaction most people know from MX Player. In Vanced they are enabled under Vanced Settings > Misc > Enable swipe controls, usually with fullscreen-only mode on by default so that gestures never fire accidentally while browsing. Depending on the build, you could also adjust swipe sensitivity and the visibility of the on-screen overlay. If swipes seem to do nothing, check whether the fullscreen-only restriction is on and you are testing in the small player.

Ad Blocking Toggles

Ad blocking is why the app exists; the name itself is "Advanced" with the "Ad" removed. The relevant switches sit at the top of Vanced Settings in the Ad settings section:

• Video ads: the master toggle that removes pre-roll and mid-roll video ads
• General ads and layout toggles: a granular list that hides banner ads, merchandise shelves, "shorts" shelves, info cards, and other promotional layout elements individually

Most users simply left everything blocked, but the granular list mattered if you wanted, say, to keep info cards while removing ads. One honest caveat: ad blocking on a frozen client is a moving target. YouTube changes ad delivery server-side, and when that happens on an unmaintained app, ads can reappear with no fix available.

YouTube Vanced Settings Not Saving or Greyed Out

If settings refuse to save, reset after restart, or appear greyed out, work through these in order:

• Check dependent toggles. Many options are conditional: the Black theme needs dark mode active, PiP needs the Android permission, some SponsorBlock sub-options need the master switch on.
• Restart the app fully. Several options only apply after the app is swiped away from recents and reopened, which looks like the setting "not saving."
• Update or reinstall MicroG. Account-dependent options misbehave when Vanced MicroG is missing, outdated, or logged out.
• Clear cache, not data. Clearing the app's cache is safe; clearing data wipes your settings and signs you out.
• Accept that some breakage is permanent. Since the project was discontinued, YouTube server changes can disable features regardless of what the local toggles say. If core functions are failing, see the full Vanced not working guide and recognize that the fix may be migrating away.

The Same Settings in ReVanced Today

Every option above has a living equivalent in ReVanced, which took over as the community successor. The mental model shifts a little: Vanced shipped as one prebuilt app with settings inside it, while ReVanced applies patches to an official YouTube APK. Some choices (like which theme or which features exist at all) happen at patch time in ReVanced Manager, and the rest live in a ReVanced section inside the patched app's settings.

For anyone still tweaking toggles on the final Vanced build, nothing is lost by moving. The theme, background play, SponsorBlock categories, quality defaults, and swipe controls all carry over, and unlike Vanced they get fixed when YouTube changes something. Start from the YouTube Vanced hub if you want the broader context on the project's status first.

Frequently Asked Questions