How to play YouTube videos in the background on your smartphone

YouTube is a great repository of tutorials, music, films etc but one of the most annoying fact about the YouTube app on Android and iOS devices is that it stops playing as soon as you open another App/screen. Suppose you are working on a YouTube tutorial explaining dialer shortcuts and want to follow the procedure using your dialer, you will find that your tutorial has stopped when you go to dialer. This happens when 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.

What if you want to listen to music on the YouTube app on your smartphone while surfing the web or doing something else? The best and the easiest way is to buy YouTube Red subscription which costs $9.99 per month and will give you bonus features like the ability to download YouTube videos on smartphones, a subscription of Google Play Music and it’ll also get rid of YouTube ads.

But why spend something like $9.99 on a feature that can be hacked for free? Right! Here is a tutorial for you to continue playing YouTube videos in the background on your smartphones/tablets for free.

HOW TO PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEOS IN THE BACKGROUND

For iOS

First, delete the YouTube App for iOS for this trick to work.

* Go to the YouTube site through Safari.
* Search and play the music video you want and wait till the video plays in full screen.
* Next, press the home button; this will bring you to the home screen and stop the audio.
* Now swipe and bring up the control center and tap the play button.

Now, your favourite YouTube video/music 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. If you don’t want to delete your YouTube app, you can open the YouTube site through Google Chrome browser on your iPhone/iPad and follow the same steps as above.

For Android

* Firstly, download and install Mozilla browser on your Android device.
* Open the YouTube site in Mozilla.
* Go to settings (the three dots on the top right corner) and tap on the desktop tab.
* You’ll be redirected to the desktop site of YouTube.
* Play any music video you want to here and it will keep playing in the background while you use other apps or turn off the screen.