Play YouTube in Background on Android

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YT Mobile Android App

Are you tired of YouTube stop playing when turning off your screen or minimizing the app? Don’t want to pay for YouTube or Google Music?   Try:

ytmobile.tk

Summary

This app provides a convenient place to browse the mobile web version of YouTube, and allows you to play YouTube in the background!

The YT Mobile Android app allows audio on YouTube to continue playing when closed.

Just start playing your video and minimize the app or turn the screen off, and the audio will continue to play in the background. Use the recent apps list or notification bar to easily bring YT Mobile back to the foreground.

Features

  • Get full YouTube mobile on your phone or tablet
  • Minimize the app and play music and videos in the background or with the screen off
  • Now you can multitask while listening to your favorite  music or movies
  • Save battery by turning off the screen and still hearing video audio

Download

ytmobile.tk
download @ ytmobile.tk

 YTMobile is no longer in active development, sorry 🙁

Support

Please leave all support questions / complaints / feature requests in the comments below, or send an E-Mail.

Troubleshooting

YT Mobile is not compatible with the latest Android System Webview.

Please UNINSTALL “Android System Webview” if you have it, to allow YT Mobile to work properly. Thanks

 YTMobile is no longer in active development, sorry 🙁

71 thoughts on “Play YouTube in Background on Android”

  4. @Nicole:
    Try clearing the cached downloads on your phone.

    • Go to “Settings > Apps (or Application Manager)”
    • Choose the “All” tab
    • Scroll down to “Download” and select
    • Click “Clear Data” and “Clear Cache” buttons
    • Press back, and repeat for “Download Manager” if you have it

    Hope that helps, sorry for the inconvenience.

  5. ***Important necessary steps for YT Mobile***

    If you are wondering how to install 3rd party apps outside the Google Play store:

    (1) – Go to Settings.
    (2) – Go to Security.
    (3) – Scroll down and check “Unknown sources” box.
    (4) – Tap ‘OK” when it show the warning.
    (5) – Install YT Mobile app (or any apk)

  7. Overall it works very well. It is so kind of you to really look into the comment section and keep improving the app. Big thanks and respect.

  10. Robert:
    The quality is determined by YouTube (auto-scaling) based on bandwidth.
    Currently there is no manual override, but this feature is planned to arrive (hopefully) sometime in the future.

  11. Amazing applications, so much better than the official YouTube app trying to squeeze out every single $$$. Is there any possibility of adding Ad-Block? That’d be amazing.

  12. @Anonymous:
    Thanks! I appreciate the feedback. I have previously investigated how to add ad-blocking with little luck. Google actively works against this, so it’s not easy 🙁 . That is not to say ad-blocking won’t happen, but it is on the wish list for now.

  16. i have the same issue as Ted. If the video player is in the foreground, the sound is great, even with the screen off. But, if you switch to another app or some other app is left in the foreground before locking the phone/turning off the screen, then the audio turns choppy. Samsung Galaxy S5, latest Android. Other than that, this app works awesome! Thanks for putting this together.

  18. I hope you can figure out a fix to the multitasking aspect because before the latest Android update this app was a beast! I’ve been enjoying this app for years.

  19. As soon as I click home button on phone ytmobile pasuses video so the background play feature is effectively gone.

    Galaxy S5 Lollipop

  24. Hi! Great app, been using BG Tube, but this is kinda better (I don’t have to tap on a dialog every time). Also, thanks for the fix for playing with multitasking (had an update to marshmallow and was wondering how to solve it), but won’t there be a problem with updates to the webview (I mean we obvs need them)? I am gonna go with the old one for a while, but still… Also, please keep like the cookies/local storage whatever so that it could give recommendations. Thanks 🙂

  29. Bogdan:
    Thanks for the feedback, I’ll note these requests. Login information is currently cleared for each upgrade, but YouTube should handle the rest after logging back in. Enjoy!

  30. I want back version 2.4 please! Want back version 2.4 please, with 2.5 i can’t acces my phone menu so give me back the old version,you have my email send me on mail please.

  33. I have a problem with your app coz I can’t make video on full screen or I cant skip video forward and backward there in no any slider to show time of the video. Pls help

  34. @dario
    When fullscreen, if you tap the screen a few times (at the bottom where the seek bar should be), the menu should appear.
    What phone and android version do you have?

  35. Problem is that I can’t go to full screen mode even if I turn my phone to horizontal position. There is not seek bar on screen as we’ll no matter how many times I tab the screen. My phone is LeTv X600 android 5.0.2

  39. Hey, thanks for the great App.
    Is it possible to play a playlist continuously?
    If i play a playlist it stops after each song. If i press next the next song starts without pressing play. It would be so nice, if i could play all songs without doing anything.
    Thank you in advance
    Mr. Martin

  40. Mr. Martin:
    Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately playlist support has been an intermittent issue for some people. Auto-playing related videos is not supported, but playlists should be.
    Please check: The auto-play option (seen next to a video in desktop mode) must be enabled via the desktop version of YouTube. This can be done on a computer, or via the app using the “…” button next to the search button and switching to desktop mode. You can also try keeping the app in desktop mode for a bit to see if that works for you.

  43. Using Marshmallow (just upgraded to a Droid Turbo 2 after my original Droid Turbo took a laptop to the knee), have uninstalled updates for and disabled Webview, but I still get REALLY choppy sound, choppiest when I hit “Home” while the app is still running in the background, it never did this in Lollipop. When it’s at its best, it sounds like a skipping CD.

  45. Google’s webview keeps reinstalling itself all the time, is there any way to stop it from doing that

  46. Guessing it’s been mentioned but since marshmallow installed ytmobile has an issue where when I lock my phone or click home, ytmobile stops playing.
    I’ve disabled webview (there is no uninstall option ) which solved the problem before, but not this time.

  47. @Keith:
    Yikes, thanks for the update, I will investigate.
    Unfortunately, I think it is inevitable Go0gle will eventually disable background play at the OS level (meaning no dev could bypass without root access)… 🙁

  48. Bummer about the issue with Marshmallow, I used this app all the time, at the office. Has there been any progress toward a solution, or has th update to Android 6.0.1 wrought the “inevitable” disabling of background play?… 🙁

  50. Thanks for the app and for the continued development. The 2.9 update runs fine for me (HTC One m7 running 5.0.2).

    I did have the problem with Webview at the last update (2.8) and found that the most current version I could run it with was 46.0.2490.76. That may only be the case for me though.

    Anyway, thanks again.

  54. @mcclanahoochie
    An update on Webview; I decided to try updating Webview to the most recent version (just to see what would happen) and have found that the screen off functionality works fine. The background functionality is still broken though (where audio stops as soon as the player looses focus, either to the home screen or an app).

    The version of Webview I tested is 52.0.2743.98 running on my HTC One (m7) v5.0.2. I have an new HTC 10 coming soon so I will be trying out various combinations when I get that as well.

    Hope this provides another piece of the puzzle.

  56. @mcclanahoochie
    As promised, I got my HTC 10 (running 6.0.1). I installed YT Mobile without updating Webview (v50.0.2661.86) and the app works fine. It keeps playing when the screen turns off and when the app loses focus.

    Updating Webview to v52 (same build above) gave the same behaviour as my One (m7); music stops when app loses focus.

  59. Do you plan to continue working on the playlist via the mobile site? It works perfectly with the screen turned off, but my “watch later” does not advance. That was my first reason to uninstall it. Tried it again, and “watch later” still doesn’t work unless I go desktop. Desktop is still MUCH better than draining the battery by leaving the screen on as I build my “watch later” in the morning for all day listening of YouTube. THANKS!!

  60. @MrsT
    There are indeed plans for a major overhaul of YTMobile, to [hopefully] address yours and others requests/concerns. Unfortunately I’ve just haven’t had much time to dedicate on this lately :/ . I will eventually do this though, and I appreciate your support and patience!

  61. Sometimes, especially if I switch apps then go back to this, I end up with a blank white screen with YT Mobile at the top. The only way to fix this seems to be a full quit and restart. I’ve disabled Webview. Please could you fix it; you could make it so the Refresh option reloads the page when it’s in this state. Thanks.

  63. The desktop version also goes blank black screen after switching. I’d rather have you work on the auto-advance of Watch Later on the mobile version though! I’m getting by with the desktop version for now, and big thanks for that.

  64. Hey
    Its a cool app i i like it very much. But since the last update of my android system the background mod works no more. If i do just the screen off it works fine but not if i change for example to whatsapp.
    I got a Samsung galaxy s7 edge,
    Systemversion: G935FXXU1BPLB/G936FVFG1BPK3/
    G935FXXU1BPK6
    The ANDROI SYSTEM WEBVIEW is deactivated.
    What should i do?

  65. @Manuel
    Thanks for the feedback and support!
    Unfortunately newer versions of Android are disabling background play deep in the Android OS, where I have yet to find a workaround… 🙁
    I am unable to say for sure when a fix (if any) will be available. It is a shame Go0gle started doing this.

  70. You instructed to UNINSTALL “Android System Webview (for complete info about this app check: https://www.goodcore.co.uk/blog/android-system-webview/)” this App has web environment integrating capabilities. It operates in the background, without any user interaction. It’s basically a web browser engine built into an operating system that makes it possible to open web pages within applications. So wouldn’t its un-installation cause issues for other apps to run???

  71. Hi, at the time of writing the article, the “Android System Webview” was an *update* to the existing internal system webview (which could not be uninstalled). It was the updated Android System Webview that caused issues with the app.
    It wasn’t long before the updated Android System Webview got integrated in the core of every newer Android OS, effectively killing YTMobile for good :/

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