play YouTube video in background feature image

How to play YouTube videos in the background?

Before starting the methods on how to play YouTube videos in the background. Let’s talk about the brief history of YouTube. Back in 2005 Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim started this video sharing and streaming platform. Since then YouTube has been able to get recognized worldwide and become the first choice for watching, sharing and streaming video. Currently Google owns YouTube after it bought the company for 1.65 Billion US dollars in 2006. As of 07/03/2022 YouTube has 2.6 Billion monthly active users and more than 122 Million active users daily.

After the brief history and stats of YouTube let’s dive into the main topic “How to play YouTube videos in the background?”. In this post there will be 3 most easy to use methods, so without wasting any time let’s begin.

Method 1: Using VLC Player to play youtube videos in background

One of the methods commonly used to play YouTube videos in the background is by using the VLC media player. 

Side note: what is a VLC media player?

The VideoLAN project created the free and open-source VLC media player, a portable, cross-platform media player and streaming media server. Both desktop and mobile operating systems, including Android, iOS, and iPadOS, support VLC.

Moving on to the process for playing YouTube videos in the background:

  • Head to Google Play Store on your Android smartphone 
  • Download the VLC for Android app
  • Once downloaded, go to the YouTube app
  • Open the video you want to play in the background
  • Select the three-dotted menu on the YouTube video
  • Select the Share option and then select Play in VLC option
  • Once the video gets loaded in VLC, click on the three-dotted menu in the VLC app
  • Tap on the Play as Audio option and the work gets done

Method 2: Play Youtube Videos in background Using Browser

This trick can help you play YouTube videos in the background with the use of the Chrome browser or others such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, or more. Here’s what you need to do:

  • Open YouTube on Chrome or any other browser on your Android or iOS smartphone
  • Select the three-dotted menu in the top right corner
  • Select the Desktop Site option, following which YouTube will reload to run its PC version
  • All you have to do is go for any YouTube, play it, and go to Home 
  • The video will stop playing and to play it in the background you just need to pull down the notification shade (in Android) or the Control Center (in iOS) and resume playing the video
  • Now, the video will easily play in the background
  • One thing worth noting is that if you head back to Google Chrome, the video will be

Method 3: subscribing to YouTube Premium or YouTube Music

Another way to play YouTube videos in the background is by either subscribing to YouTube Premium or YouTube Music. This way, you can play music videos on YouTube without the need to stay on the app. However, the method isn’t a free one and you would require to pay for it. Hence, if you don’t have a problem spending, this is the easiest way. As a reminder,  both YouTube Premium and YouTube Music offer a free subscription for 30 days, so trying it can be an option.

Those were the 3 common methods that can be consider for playing the YouTube videos in the background. Hope you liked the article, if you have any suggestions please comment down below.

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