To play YouTube Music in the background, the official way is a paid YouTube Music Premium subscription, but you can use workarounds like opening YouTube in a mobile browser (Chrome, Safari, Brave) and requesting the "desktop site" to play audio when you exit the app or lock your screen. For a browser-based solution, play your music in the browser, then access playback controls from your phone's notification panel or control center to resume playback after minimizing or locking the screen.
If you don't have a YouTube Music Premium subscription, the app will stop playing music when you switch to another app or lock your phone. To keep your music playing in the background, you can use browser tricks or tools like ViWizard YouTube Music Converter, which allows offline playback.
Background play only works in the YouTube mobile apps and requires a YouTube Premium membership.
You can play YouTube in the background using a browser trick (requesting desktop site in Chrome/Safari) for free audio, enabling Picture-in-Picture (PiP) in app settings for video multitasking (often needs Premium), or by subscribing to YouTube Premium for seamless background audio and video across devices.
Most major music streaming apps for Android, like Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Music, automatically allow background play. Simply start your playlist or podcast, then press the Home button or swipe up to exit the app. The audio will keep playing while you use other apps.
How to Stop YouTube from Pausing Automatically on Mobile or PC
Restart your device. Check for system updates in your device's Settings. Clear your YouTube Music app cache. You can either do this in your device's Settings or by deleting and redownloading the YouTube Music app.
Copyright holders decide how they want their music to be used on YouTube. The copyright holder's policies will affect whether and how your video is made available. If you use music in your video, you may get a Content ID claim telling you that you used copyrighted content.
To prevent YouTube from pausing videos automatically, you can consider using add-ons such as "YouTube NonStop," which prevents automatic pausing by automatically interacting with the activity confirmation message.
Adjust the Data saver settings.
If you have a data limit set, you will need to adjust the limit for the music app. Navigate to Settings, then tap Apps, and then tap the app you want to keep running. Tap Mobile data, and then tap the switch next to Allow data usage while Data saver is on.
Just go to YouTube app and get to the setting. Then select background and download, set playback always on then you should be good.
To change or turn off background play:
You can play YouTube in the background using a browser trick (requesting desktop site in Chrome/Safari) for free audio, enabling Picture-in-Picture (PiP) in app settings for video multitasking (often needs Premium), or by subscribing to YouTube Premium for seamless background audio and video across devices.
To rule out this possibility, you need to check whether you are using the latest version of the YouTube app. If not, you need to update it: If you are using an Android device, you can go to the Google Play Store app > hamburger button > My apps & games to check whether the YouTube app needs to be updated.
With a YouTube Music Premium membership, you can listen to music and podcasts uninterrupted while using other apps or when your screen is off. Explore one of the richest music catalogs on earth with YouTube Music.
It's because YouTube music doesn't allow playback while screen off. It's only a premium feature, provided by YouTube. Playback feature while screen off is only available for premium subscriptions.