The YouTube website is probably the world’s biggest library of songs and music videos that you can watch on any device. Some might remember a time when YouTube was an built-in app on iOS devices – you could play YouTube videos in the background, thereby allowing you to use other apps (or turn the screen off) while still being able to listen to the audio of the YouTube clips. Then iOS 6 came along and YouTube was removed and became an app in the iTunes App Store – as a result, the background playback feature was also removed.
While YouTube has an extraordinary collection of songs, there's one considerable problem with listening to music directly from YouTube on your iOS—you can't exit and keep listening. If you leave the YouTube app or turn of the screen off while the video is playing, it will abruptly stop. But in this softModder guide, I'm going to show you a few quick tricks in iOS 7 on how to get YouTube Videos In The Background On iOS 7.
- Launch Safari, the default browser on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. (You can also launch another browser, such as Google Chrome)
- Search for YouTube in the address bar / search box, or simply type youtube.com.
- Tap the small magnifying glass icon and then search for a video that you want to listen to.
- Tap on a video from the list of results and let it begin to play.
- Press your device's home button to return to the home screen. The music will stop. But, swipe up from the bottom to display Control Center. Tap the play button to continue playing the audio from the YouTube video.
- You can now launch another app, such as Messages or Mail and keep listening while using that app. Some games (those which allow you to keep listening to your own music) will still be usable without cutting off the audio from the YouTube video. If you want to browse the web, you'll need to use a different web browser from the one which is playing the YouTube video, since switching tabs will cause playback to stop. If you don't have another browser installed, try Google Chrome.
- You can listen to YouTube with the screen off, too. Press the sleep/wake button to turn your device off and the audio from the YouTube video will stop. Now press it again and tap the play button to restart the audio. Now when you turn off your iPhone or iPad, the audio will keep playing.
If you’re doing this on an iPhone that is not connected to wi-fi, the video will stream using the cellular connection instead. That includes starting the video on wi-fi, but using Control Center to start the stream in the background later when away from wi-fi. Just be aware of that, since streaming video and audio can be heavy on the bandwidth usage.
Unfortunately, YouTube Playlists don’t seem to be supported, so if you want to hear another video you’ll need to go back to Safari and start to play it again, then use the Control Center trick to again start the audio stream.
This works the same with YouTube in Safari for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, running any version of iOS beyond the 7.0 release. Enjoy.