i want to watch the stream at max resolution in picture-in-picture mode and every time i do it, it goes to 480p on pc, when i switch tabs or minimize or just use anything else on the pc, how dumb when they talk about how viewing streams is considered everyones background noise nowadays and they have it at the worst resolutions.

Such a trash company

@RAM419, that was really helpful. I have an older macbook pro 2014 with the latest Big Sur OS - works sometimes. Best way is to get the "Twitch Alternative Player" for your browser of choice.

I found that if I open the stream in it's own window (no other tabs) then it stays. It's not nice that they reduce quality on audio as well as video. Can you tell I listen to music a lot on Twitch? Still really annoyed I have to set the streams to auto or higher quality every time I go to a new channel. It should at least keep the Auto setting or whatever setting you last used!

Please stop jacking with the quality when it is not auto. If I move away from the tab for 30 seconds to do something, I come back to 360p and it does not switch back to the previous resolution. This is entirely too aggressive and inconsistent.

I agree

Even to this day, it still does it. Very frustrating.

Ikr... wat bothering me is dat it'll set to low quality automatically when I'm not viewing the page, when I'm getting back, it stays low, only when I move my cursor onto the quality tab, it'll set it high again before I click anything...
I mean... are u dum or wat twitch eng? u should set it back high when I return to the page, not only when I'm trying to set it again. 1d10t==

YEP, this is a very prominent problem, especially if you work while watching streams. Sometimes, it even pauses the video, and I have to tab back to the stream and manually releoad the whole page, before the stream continues.

Sometimes, it also causes a playback error (#2000 or something like that), and again, requires a reload.

However, this is not something they will every revert I don't think, since it might save them some money, since bandwidth is very expensive, but it's worth a shot.

It's been a few weeks since Twitch changed how stream quality auto changes based on whether the tab is in the current tab/window or not. This change automatically lowers the quality of streams to 480p (or lower) for streams not in the current tab, and when the stream is tabbed back into focus it does not always resume the originally selected quality.

This is affecting multiple browsers, with or without extensions, so this is seems very much a Twitch end feature to lower data use.
This change however has resulted in some issues:
-More buffering
-Streams hanging/pausing when tabbed out
-Quality not restoring when tabbed back
-Playback issues such as audio desync when the stream quality changes and latency has to catch up
-Streams in background no longer has thumbnail view in task view (windows key + tab) to simultaneously view multiple streams and is instead just a black screen video player.

Overall I feel like the changes have not improved the user experience and has instead introduced more issues than it saves. It should be up to the user to open as many streams as they wish at whichever quality and maintain such experience regardless of window focus.

It gets really annoying that the streams are constantly toggling between lower and selected quality when we tab in and out of them.
At least give us the option to choose whether we want this to happen.
Gets really annoying when you take control away from the user