Background playback is probably a feature that many YouTube users need to use.
First, let’s take a look at Youtube Premium .
First, let’s take a look at Youtube Premium .
Youtube Premium is a YouTube membership service. It has five major benefits: ad-free, video downloads, background playback, YouTube music membership, and exclusive dramas. It costs $11.99 per month. If you only use background playback occasionally, this price is still quite expensive. At the same time, YouTube Premium Family Sharing is part of Google Family Sharing, and it is not recommended to share the family package with non-family friends.
Let’s get to the point and introduce how to play YouTube in the background for free on Android and iOS platforms.
Android platform can use browser to get desktop version of the website. You can also use some open source third-party clients.
iOS platform can only jump to the player through Shorcuts/”shortcuts”.
1. Android
1.1 Chrome/Firefox browser
On the Android platform, when using Chrome/Firefox to browse YouTube, choose to get the desktop version of the website, and you can play in the background by pulling up the notification bar.
1.2 Youtube third-party client NewPipe
Although Google has tightened its policies and it is no longer possible to find a good YouTube client on Google Play, there are still open source software that is constantly updated. NewPipe is an open source and free YouTube client that focuses on background playback and floating window playback. You can long press the video thumbnail to add the video to the background playlist. The APP download address is F-droid.org.
Advantages: There are functions such as selecting clarity, floating window playback, and background playback.
Disadvantages: Unable to log in to YouTube, you need to manually export data such as subscription channels, and then import them into NewPipe
1.3 Youtube Music third-party client Ymusic
Ymusic focuses on listening to music and has very powerful functions. You can log in to your Google account to authorize the acquisition of liked videos, saved video lists, etc. The interface screenshot is as follows. The download address comes from XDA Labs, which is an app store provided by XDA to protect developers and prevent APPs from being reviewed/removed.
Advantages: It may be the best free YouTube music player on the Android platform.
Disadvantages: Because it focuses on music playback, all video resources will be played in audio form.
2. iOS users
On iOS 12, Safari, Chrome, Opera, Dolphin Browser and other browsers cannot play in the background by using the desktop version of YouTube. Firefox has been tested successfully, but the function is unstable and it cannot be restarted by calling the system player after pausing.
2.1 nPlayer player
nPlayer is an old player on iOS, which can play links directly. So the idea here is to copy the YouTube link, convert the link to nplayer scheme url, turn on automatic jump to nPlayer playback, and nPlayer can play videos in the background.
Click here to download the workflow. It has been tested that both nPlayer and the free nPlayer lite lite can be used.
The usage process is as follows
- Copy the YouTube link
- Click Workflow
- Play
- You can directly control the playback after locking the screen
nPlayer can only play a single video through URL Scheme, and cannot play forms and live broadcasts. If you need other playback, you can also open the video in the nPlayer built-in browser.