How do I get YouTube app to play in the background?
NEW DELHI: One annoying fact about the YouTube app on Android and
iOS devices is that it doesn’t allow background play. If you are watching a video or are listening to a music on YouTube and you navigate to a different app or turn off the screen, the
video/audio automatically gets paused. Show Now, your favourite music video will continue to play in
the background while you navigate through different apps or even lock your device. This is handy, but for this to work you’ll have to delete the YouTube app, otherwise Safari will automatically redirect you the application. For Android * You’ll be redirected to the desktop site of YouTube.
There’s a lot of music — and storytelling and news — on YouTube, and so it stands to reason that you’d want to be able to play it in the background on your mobile device while reading, texting, or doing other things. Unfortunately, unless you’re a subscriber to YouTube Premium ($11.99 a month) or YouTube Music ($9.99 a month), your ability to listen to a YouTube video in the background is limited — doable, but limited. Android users have it slightly better in this respect. Recent versions of the Android YouTube app allow you to use Picture-in-Picture (PiP) to view (or listen to) almost any YouTube video while you’re reading your tweets or checking out the latest news — that is, any video except one that’s labeled as being music. We’ll look at a workaround for music videos in Android — and for iPhone users as well (who, as of this writing, don’t have access to the PiP feature). But first, here’s how you enable PiP for YouTube in Android.
Now, when you go into the YouTube app and start playing a video, you can simply press the Home key at the bottom of your screen, and the video will shrink down, allowing you to go to another app while it continues to play. If you tap the center of the video, a small box will appear; tap again, and the video will go to full size. You will also be able to pause it if you want. A small “x” in the upper-right corner will stop the video and banish the box. There is a very large “but” here, however. As mentioned previously, PiP will not work if you try to play anything classified as a music video. For that, you need to be a subscriber to YouTube Music or YouTube Premium. There are a couple of workarounds, however. You can play a single track in the background on both an Android phone and an iPhone — but it’s a bit fiddly. And I was unable to play more than a single song in a playlist in either OS. When I tried it on a phone running Android 10, the same song kept repeating, while on an iPhone running iOS 13, the music simply stopped. However, if you want to give it a try, here’s how to play music in the background of your mobile device. On an Android phoneThis method, which I first saw written up in Digital Trends works in Chrome and may work in other mobile browsers as well.
On an iPhonePlaying a free YouTube video — any video — on an iPhone is even more tricky, especially because some methods that previously worked were hammered by iOS 13. I finally found a method that actually works (most of the time, anyway) in a video produced by Daniel About Tech.
I had no trouble playing a single video in the background using this method. If it doesn’t work for you at first, then, according to Daniel, if you go back into Safari and restart the video, it should play. But while I was able to play a single video in background, as in the Android workaround, I was unable to play more than a single track. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. For more information, see our ethics policy. Why can't the YouTube app play in the background?If the YouTube app or your mobile device has been running for some time, there may not be enough resources for background play to work smoothly. Try closing the YouTube app or rebooting your phone.
How do I get YouTube to play while playing other apps?Picture-in-picture (PiP) shrinks a video into a small player so you can keep watching while using other apps on your mobile device.. Go to your Android settings Apps & notifications Advanced Special app access. Picture-in-picture.. Tap YouTube.. To turn off, tap Allow picture-in-picture.. |