Ever wished you could keep listening to your favorite YouTube video in the background while using other apps on your iPhone?
Well, you can, if you pay for a YouTube Premium subscription. But have you ever wanted to be able to listen to your favorite YouTube video in the background for free?
Enter iOS 14, which will allow you to do exactly that. Apple for iOS 14 at its 2020 World Developer Conference on Monday. From widgets on your home screen and renewed call notifications to online message responses and mentions, with so much news from Apple, everyone is sure to overlook some of the side effects of all these new features.
Case in point: iOS 14’s new picture-in-picture feature. Now you can do another job on your iPhone or iPad while keeping the video you were watching open in a small floating thumbnail window that you can move anywhere on the screen. Cool, right?
Social media strategist Matt Navarra noticed something even cooler about it. You can use that picture-in-picture feature with open YouTube videos through the Safari web browser app. The floating YouTube video can even be pushed off the screen and voila, you’re playing your favorite YouTube music video in the background like it’s a music app.
You can even continue to listen to picture-in-picture video when you lock your iPhone screen.
Please note that you cannot do picture-in-picture with the YouTube app. To listen to YouTube videos in the background, you must open the video within Safari. Why is that? Because YouTube uses the ability to play videos in the background as a major selling point for your YouTube Premium subscription.
Music is huge on YouTube. A found that almost half of all internet music streaming consumption already occurs on the video platform. Background video playback built into iOS 14 can make YouTube an even more popular choice for listening to music.
This iOS feature is not a complete replacement for YouTube Premium. Paid subscribers also get offline video download capabilities and an ad-free experience. However, if background playback is one of the top reasons you pay $ 11.99 a month for YouTube Premium, you may be able to save a few bucks and use this workaround.
iOS 14 will be released later this year. However, you can launch for your iPhone and iPad now.
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