5 Ways to Play YouTube in the Background on iPhone

Updated Oct 24,2018 | by Cody

YouTube, the biggest video service, also provides much great music, podcast and talk show. For such content, you probably only want to listen to the audio. In that case, it will be great to play YouTube in the background on iPhone or other mobile devices.

In this article, I will show you 5 ways to play YouTube audio in the background. Some of the methods here should also work on Android devices. No matter what device you use, you should find a proper way to listen to YouTube audio in the background here.

With Safari, it is easy to set up with the need to download an app. Let me show you how to do it step by step.

Step 1. Open Safari app and use it to play the YouTube video you want to play in the background.

Step 2. Request the Desktop version. To bring up the Request Desktop Site option, you can either press and hold the Refresh icon or tap the Share button.

Step 3. When the desktop version is fully loaded, play this video and tap to open or switch to another tab. If the video contains ads, you will need to wait until the ads is complete.

Step 4. Now you can go to the Home Screen or use other apps. The YouTube audio is now playing in the background.

You can even lock your screen and the YouTube audio will not stop playing. This works great with large screen device like iPhone X or iPad. However, If you are using a small screen iOS device like iPhone 6 or iPod Touch, this might be tricky. You need to quickly open a new tab before the video is playing in full screen.

If you are using a small screen iOS device, don’t worry. You can still use Safari to play YouTube video in the background with the help of Shortcuts app, which is provided by Apple. Let me show you how it works.

Step 1. Install the Shortcuts app if you haven’t already. Get this Background YouTube shortcut.

Step 2. Open the YouTube video in Safari. Tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen.

Step 3. Select Shortcuts. If you do not see this option, tab More to enable Run Shortcuts option in the share sheet.

Step 4. When it completes. Lock your screen and press Play.

Shortcuts can do much more than just this. As you using it, you can explore or create more great Siri Shortcuts.

If you use another web browser besides Safari, you can use it to play YouTube videos in the background. There process is just like it in method 1.

On the YouTube video page, press the three dots icon and select Request Desktop Site. Watch the ads and then you can play the video when your iPhone is locked.

Another method would be to download the YouTube video and extract audio out of the video. You can use a tool IOTransfer to ease your efforts. IOTransfer, iPhone manager software, can help you download videos from YouTube and rip extract audio from it.

Besides, you can click one more button to automatically transfer the YouTube audio files to the Music app library. You can download it free now to get started. 

Simply paste a YouTube video URL in the Video Downloader box and click Download to download the YouTube video.

After that, go to the Converter section. Select the output format (many audio formats supported), and check the option automatically transfer the converted video into your iOS device.

When that’s done. You can open the Music app to play the YouTube audio. Obviously, you can play it in the background. You can also download a whole YouTube playlist and play them in the background.

The last option will be pay the YouTube Red subscription fee. Once you get YouTube Red, you can play YouTube video in the background and there will be no ads in any video. If money is not the problem, then this is the best option. 

That’s all the 5 methods to paly YouTube in the background on iPhone. What’s your favorite method? If you have a better method, leave it in the comment section. It will help others.

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