The ability to listen to YouTube in the background of your iPhone or Android is a feature people have wanted for years. Unfortunately, app creators have been tied by YouTube’s terms of service forbidding the playing of videos in the background. Fortunately, we’ve found two ways to overcome this for both iPhone and Android.
Listen to YouTube in the background on iPhone
Apps make our lives easy every day. Not many realise that apps also place limitations on what you can do sometimes. The YouTube app is a great example of convenience and limitations. Of course, you can watch a huge range of videos, but with the app running in the background. This makes it impossible to listen to music with the screen off. Actually…
You can’t listen to the audio from videos in the background through the app, but there is a really simple workaround.
Play audio from YouTube in the background with Safari
You’re reading the headline, thinking it can’t be so simple right? Here’s what you need to do in order to play YouTube in the background when using an iPhone:
- Open Safari browser
- Navigate to YouTube
- Select awesome video of your choice
- Press the home button
- Swipe up from bottom of screen to load quick navigation (Control Centre)
- Press play
It really is that simple. The iPhone system remembers the clip you were watching with YouTube via Safari and allows the Control Centre to play in the background. Beautiful.
Listen to YouTube in the background on Android
Unusually, iPhones are a little more accommodating for this workaround as you’ll need an app for Android. You’re likely familiar with the one you need too. In order to listen to YouTube in the background on Android you need to download is Mozilla Firefox browser and follow these steps:
- Open the Firefox browser
- Navigate to YouTube
- Select awesome video of your choice
- Press the home button
You’ll notice that when you press the home button and the Firefox app closes, your video continues to play. This means you can turn off your screen or go about checking Facebook while the music plays in the background.
It’s that simple. We love using Spotify, but this is a great and free alternative providing access to a huge database of music. We’ll be using this for loads of podcasts and TED Talks.