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How to Keep Listening to YouTube in the Background or With iPhone Locked
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Nope, does not work for me either.
Perhaps this is because my YouTube is not connected to any user account and used anonymously?
Edit: never mind, as no PIP in Europe with a free YouTube app.
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It is crucial that you actually pause the currently running video from the Control Center widget, or on the lock screen the widget wouldn't know about the browser video!
I have no Google or YouTube login, so I'm watching anonymously and this still works for me!
Yes, my mistake was that I was trying this with YouTube app, so your “browser video” bit sent me in the right direction. 😉
What worked for me was this:
1) Open YouTube in Safari (no need to switch to Desktop version);
2) Start playing any video;
3) With the video playing, slide down the Control Center and pause the video;
4) Lock the screen, so it goes black;
5) When you awaken the screen again, you should see the play control widget appear at the bottom of it, so you can press play, lock the screen again and the sound will go on playing.
PS In my case it also jumps to the Dynamic Island for a second, but disappears quite quickly from it if I do not act on it.
What I have been doing for years literally is always watch YT on Safari. You can have multiple videos opened in Safari tabs etc.There is a MUCH BETTER and easier way to do this (for me on my 13 pro at least). Just start watching any video on Youtube. Swipe up to the home screen. Hopefully the video supports PIP and you can then see the video playing on your home screen. Lock your phone next. Then swipe down to reveal the control center. In the music section of the control center it will just say 'now playing' but not indicate anything in particular. Just click the play button...and VOILA! It's playing with your phone locked. Easy peasy. The Macrumors instructions above are somewhat cumbersome. Cheers
Edit: once in a blue moon the PIP doesn't work for me, and then this method doesn't work. I do not have YT Premium for the record.
To „watch” something in the background or with the phone locked do pretty much what the article suggests - but you don’t even need to be in „desktop website”, you can do it in mobile website as well. Play the video in full screen, swipe up to go back to home screen and play the vid from the control centre. Occasionally you need to do this twice as sometimes control centre will start playing the music - but you will be able to see by the title. In that case just go back to video, play again in full screen again etc…
The added benefit is that when you play the video in Safari and ads start, all you need to do is swipe down to refresh the website and the video will reload without the ad 🤫
Only when you pause watching a video for a while and start doin something else, and return to the video midway the ads will sometimes restart (especially when video has mid-video ads) the you might need to refresh the page several times until ads disappear 😆.
I have pretty much always watched YT in Safari apart from when I needed to watch something in higher definition, but for couple of months now YT on iPhone Safari will play any resolution that’s available for the video and in HDR as well, so you can watch any quality you desire from Safari platform now (in the past it used to be 720 max).
even weirder considering apple and googles special relationship
apple is letting them
Yes, exactly! 🙂
And this method isn't limited to YouTube in the browser either but it works in various other apps as well.
Only if the lock screen doesn't display the media controls you can still use Control Center to un-pause playback.
This point is so underrated. On the free version, the ads can get annoying enough to get me to stop watching after a while. With Premium, one has to make a deliberate effort to pull away. I imagine in their minds this makes you more likely to keep your premium subscription, so they don’t have an incentive to make YouTube Premium to be less addictive. In my mind there’s a sweet spot where it’s utility is already proven and sinking any further time is a major disbenefit. I wish their algorithms learned this and made it easier to peel away once one was starting to spend too much time on it.
The YouTube app has settings to remind you to stop watching, with fully customizable times:
On the Mac, Vinegar also seems to layer itself over the HBO Max player in an awkward way.
a lot of good workarounds in this thread.
ill pay for an ad blocker before paying for yt premium
ill pay for an ad blocker before paying for yt premium
Everyone has their own tips for this, but man I've been doing this exact same thing for years and it is handy. Done it a lot to utilize different white noise videos.
I think it's bad that YouTube gets to control whether or not their app can multitask in the background. This should be entirely under the control of iOS just like on a computer. Websites don't get to control what happens when you multitask, they don't even know about it. YouTube is technically a website, the only reason you use the app is because the website detects you're on mobile and nags you about it. The whole way this works should not be allowed. YouTube shouldn't be allowed to discriminate between mobile and desktop when you request the desktop site. It should also not be allowed to know if you've put the app in the background.
I'm not sure who's more scummy. Google not allowing this feature on non-Premium users, or the fact that Apple allows Google to abuse this privilege. But you know, $$$ talks, and Apple is ranking in that 30% cut and the $18B (reportedly) in annual revenue from Google default search.
Or use the PiP shortcut floating around on MR or other websites so you don’t have to download stuff to your phone
Well if you're invested in Apple ecosystem, AM is practically the only way to go. Synced lyrics, lossless, Atmos and Spatial to be enjoyed to the fullest if you have AirPods Pro or Beats. Everything goes seamlessly, the interface is synchronized and in harmony with the whole system. YT Music on iPhone is okay, but definitely just for basic streaming and not much else.
I use YT Premium because I want ad-free YouTube, but hardly touch YT Music I even forget that it's there, which makes it a quite expensive subscription.
YouTube Music has synced lyrics as well. I don’t believe in lossless (I did lossy/lossless blind A/B tests in the past, and all headphones are a compromise sound-quality-wise anyway, I’ve compared dozens, there is no silver bullet). Spatial sound can have a wow effect, but in the end I always prefer the original mix, and most of what I listen to doesn’t have a spatial mix anyway. The ecosystem “harmony” doesn’t help if it only has half the music I’m interested in and the UI is a mess.
Apple likes to promote the illusion that it’s all integrated and seamless and worry-free, but in reality it always comes apart at the seams and you end up fighting with limitations and issues anyways.
Well you have a valid argument. Yes I agree that I'm still stuck with AM because of limitation Apple puts up with their ecosystem. Nonetheless, I still only want ad-free YouTube but not the Music. Few regions used to have a YT Premium Lite which is exactly what I need so I don't have to pay for things I rarely use. I just wish Google expand it globally, instead of dunk it.