How long can you use YouTube TV away from home? What you need to know

One of the many benefits of live TV streaming services such as YouTube TV is being able to take your cable plan and all of its personalized elements on the go with you. It’s never been easier to pull up your DVR’d shows and movies from truly anywhere.

However, YouTube TV does need to know where you are so as to provide you with accurate local channels. With this comes the need to make sure you are properly using your account and don’t have access to channels you might not be in the right place to access. So the question becomes, how long is too long away from home for YouTube TV?

The 90-day rule

Not just for reality TV fiancées.

Szabo Viktor / Unsplash / Pocket-lint

Google’s recommendation is that you should use YouTube TV at least once every three months in your home area. For baseball fans, this number actually shrinks down to one month due to how especially finicky MLB viewing restrictions can be based on region. By checking in while at home at least once within that three-month period, you’ll still be able to view your home networks just fine.

Now, you might ask yourself what would happen if you didn’t. The answer is that you’ll likely end up with local channels based on wherever you happen to be at the time YouTube TV checks your location. There are not truly dire consequences of not checking in, unless you really want to be able to keep up with your local TV networks. This especially applies if you want to DVR local programs, as the channels vanishing from your YouTube TV account will mess that up. And if you’re wondering how that stacks up with other cable alternatives in terms of length of time and consequence, there is some difference. Hulu + Live TV, for example, needs you to check in every 30 days. Failure to do so will result in an interruption of service. If you travel a lot, this is a perk of YouTube TV that is worth bearing in mind.

It is worth noting that this all applies to domestic travel. For international travel, you’re strictly out of luck. You will not be able to use YouTube TV whatsoever. While that is unfortunate, keeping up with your cable subscription while traveling abroad, hopefully shouldn’t be an issue to put a great deal of worry into. Though it is worth noting that if you are going to be unable to use your YouTube TV subscription for any considerable length of time, you should consider pausing it to save money .

What to do if your location is updated

Accidents happen, and they’re easy to fix.

Say, for the sake of argument, that you’re traveling, and for one reason or another, you aren’t able to make that 90-day check in window. Say you can check in four days later, but your channels have already updated to wherever you were traveling. Fixing this is easy and only requires a few clicks. It also requires that you be at home.

1. Go to the YouTube TV website
2. Select your profile photo, then click Location.
3. Next to the Home area box, click Update.

The same set of steps can roughly be followed in both the Android and iOS versions of the YouTube TV app. Once you’ve set your home area back to your actual home, you’ll have another 90 days before YouTube TV will want to update it.

While the whole thing is a little finicky, especially for users that are frequently traveling, it doesn’t ultimately matter too much if you don’t care about accessing your local channels. If your main concern is national networks of any stripe, then you can use YouTube TV while traveling domestically with absolutely zero worries.