YouTube is the great application to play video. However, we can’t always stay glued to the screen and we need to either use it simultaneously with other applications, or even simply play the audio of a video in the background or with the screen off.
There are many solutions, especially on Android, to watch or listen to YouTube videos in the background on your mobile . These are the best:
YouTube Premium
The simplest solution, although not free, is YouTube Premium, the platform’s subscription service that, in exchange for a monthly fee, allows you some additional functions, including playback in the background, without ads and/or Without connection.
In principle, YouTube Premium is priced at 11.99 euros per month , although there is a specific plan to listen to music for 9.99 euros, a price similar to that of Spotify Premium. You can also find special prices on family plans (17.99 euros per month for up to 5 members) or discounts for students (6.99 euros per month).
The screen-in-screen (PIP) function allows you to watch YouTube videos while using other apps on your mobile device, since the video image is reduced to a small player that you can also move around the screen so that it does not interfere with the app that you have left in the foreground and disturb certain areas of the screen.
Audio with the desktop version of YouTube
The YouTube app, as well as its mobile-friendly browser version, block the audio once you exit it to the home menu or any other app. However, you can still force desktop mode to at least listen to your video, which is very useful for podcasts or songs.
youtube in notification bar
In the Chrome browser, go to the YouTube website. In the menu in the upper left corner (three dots), select the option “View as computer”. This should open the full web. When starting a video, we can exit the application and the audio will stop. However, we will see that in the notification bar we do have the option to pause, stop or resume the video, which will play the audio in the background.
Especially on Android, there are many alternative YouTube applications created by independent developers, which in most cases bypass some of the restrictions imposed by YouTube itself.
One of them —and perhaps the best— is YouTube Vanced ( link to its APK ), a modified version of the original YouTube app that has a multitude of extra features such as the ability to see the number of dislikes on a video again, delete ads and sponsorships within the video and of course, playback in the background . This not only applies to a floating mini player, but also to the ability to listen to the audio of the video if the screen is turned off.
PIP app for iOS
On iOS things get complicated, but it can also be possible to have this functionality through apps, even free ones like X.App, a Picture-in-Picture video extension that allows you to transfer videos to the browser in the X.app application from other applications (YouTube, Chrome, etc.).
X.app on iOS
It is compatible with iPhone and iPad and also allows other features such as forcing all kinds of videos to play on the screen.
Browsers with PIP support
Firefox , for example, allows you to watch the video in a small floating window thanks to Android’s native PiP mode that was enabled since Android 8.0 Oreo , but in case you close this mini player, the video stops.
To solve this problem, you will have to install the Video Background Play Fix plugin, which allows you to play YouTube videos with the browser in the background.
VLC Player
The famous cone icon player also has a mobile version, which allows you to play any video, both from your smartphone and from external sites, including YouTube.
VLC for mobile
You will have to enter YouTube and choose the video you want to play, click on share and choose the Play with VLC option. Once in VLC, in the dropdown in the lower right corner choose Play as audio, which will allow the video to continue playing even if you exit the VLC application or turn off the screen.