[sreya]

Not being able to play Youtube in the background on your phone is unfortunately one of the main appeals of Premium. There's a lot of good mixes, concerts, etc that I play for the audio while doing something else that I can't do without Premium unless I wanted to leave my phone unlocked (and pray I don't pocket click a link).

[qwerpy]

My iPhone running Safari and uBlock Origin lite is able to do this. I don't have the youtube app installed. I don't even think the ad blocker is necessary for background audio, but I don't want to see ads.

1. Go to youtube.com in the browser, play the video, switch back to the home screen. Video playback will stop, which is a good default behavior.

2. Swipe down from the top of the screen which brings up "Notification Center" which somewhat strangely contains a playback control for the browser.

3. Press play. Audio resumes. If it's part of a playlist, you don't have to manually advance, it will play automatically.

No ads, no youtube premium subscription, no "desktop mode", no sideloading, no additional apps other than the beloved ad blocker.

[arialdomartini]

TIL Thank you pal, it perfectly works!

[cjameskeller]

Firefox Android can play audio even when the phone is locked, and I use it regularly.

[TheCapeGreek]

Note: If you have a mid-range to lower end phone, battery optimization might stop your playback anyway by default. You can exclude Firefox from battery optimization though.

[just-another-se]

brave on android can also do the same, not sure about ios

[R_D_Olivaw]

I'm fairly certain if you use a browser and the desktop version of the site you can listen with the screen off/locked.

[shminge]

If you're on Android, YouTube Revanced does this (+many other premium features)

[EliteGadget]

I run Brave (Android) on my phone and don't have any ads on Youtube. I think it worked on Brave iOS but I sold my iPhone last year.

I let Brave run in the background and it seems to work fine.

[a96]

Brave is a series scam company.

[EliteGadget]

I don't think that is true and I don't really care. The browser works properly, it has ad-blocking built in and it is trivial to turn off the other nonsense in the browser.

[MathMonkeyMan]

You can open youtube in the phone's web browser and install an extension that blocks a site's ability to tell when focus has left the page/app. This is how I listen to some music on my phone while working out.

Ad blockers help with the constant nagging about "open in the app!"

[alextingle]

NewPipe

[DirkH]

Never works