WWDC 2020 – How to Play YouTube in Background on iPhone Without YouTube Premium.
Apple released iOS 14 beta to developers at WWDC 2020, and there are tons of amazing features that enhance your iPhone’s functionality. Among them, PIP is one of my favorites, which allows you to watch thumbnail-format videos in the corner of your screen while you do other things on your phone. For example, let’s say you watch Netflix in a small window while texting a friend on WhatsApp. It turns out PiP also supports YouTube videos in Safari, at least for now. Let’s see how to play YouTube videos in the background, let’s see how.
Play YouTube in the background on iPhone
This PIP mode is introduced in iOS 14, and you’ll need it on your iPhone for it to work. There are tons of detailed guides on the internet to help you install iOS 14 on iPhone. Once iOS 14 is installed and running on your iPhone, follow the instructions.
Step 1:
Open your Safari browser and go to youtube.com.
Step 2:
Search for the video on the YouTube website and click to start playing in Safari. When playback starts, click the full screen button in the lower right corner of the video player.
Step 3:
Now, when you swipe up to go to the home page, your YouTube video shrinks and keeps rotating in the floating window. To put it in the background, simply swipe the floating window to the side where it is docked, and minimize it while music plays in the background. That’s it, the music is still playing in the background. To move it, just drag it with your fingertip. Unforntli, it doesn’t support YouTube playlist.
Last words
It was a quick way to set up iPhone to watch YouTube in the background on iPhone. Since YouTube offers this feature as part of their YouTube Premium subscription, I’m not sure if they will disable this workaround in the future. We’ll have to wait and see how it all ends. In any case, I will update this article if there are any new features or information. What do you think of this feature, let me know in the comments below?
Also read: YouTube is capped at 480p. Here’s how to watch in full resolution.