How To Play YouTube In The Background On Your Smartphone.

 

If you're a millennial, I doubt you watch content on your cable television set and rarely even bother listening to the radio unless you're in a car. Streaming apps such as Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime have taken over our devices and home video systems. YouTube has become a huge replacement for many people for the TV and many consume media on their smartphones. However, there is one annoying obstacle all of us face: playing audio from YouTube in the background. 

Smartphones are meant to help us in multi-tasking and if you want to go respond to an email for a second and not want YouTube to pause the video, what do you do? You can either pay for YouTube Red subscription to unlock the feature or follow our guide to cheat a little. 

While using iMessage on my iPhone, I was sharing a few YouTube videos with a friend and I noticed I could play the video right within the app. The same was the case with the Android version of the Telegram App where it would play only the audio or minimise Telegram for me to watch the video. This way I could even do other things on my smartphone and have the video play in the background at the same time.

So here's a quick guide for you to follow.

Android Users:

Open www.youtube.com in the Chrome browser.
Open menu at the top right, check the “Request desktop site” box.
Navigate to the video you want to listen to and press play.
If you're shown a warning saying YouTube wants to send you notifications, accept it.
Exit the Chrome app and you'll be able to resume playback from the notification menu.

iOS Users (Works on iPhone and iPad)

Download the Dolphin web browser to your iOS device.
Open www.youtube.com in Dolphin.
Navigate to the video you want to listen to and press play.
Exit the Dolphin app and you'll be able to resume playback from the iOS Control Center.
Google obviously wants users to pay to have access to such features which is why the company encourages users to buy a YouTube Red subscription. These are currently the only ways to run YouTube in the background at the moment and we suggest you give it a try to avoid future annoyance.