You can keep on playing YouTube audio in the background even if it is minimized and you’re in another app on iPad running iPadOS.
Nifty Little Trick Lets You Keep on Playing YouTube Audio in the Background Even if Safari is Minimized on iPadOS
Here’s how the story goes on the iPad - you are playing something on YouTube, maybe a song or a podcast, you minimize the app and boom, everything goes silent. The way around it? Get YouTube Premium, and it will cost you real money. However, thanks to a little ‘bug’ in iPadOS you can keep on playing YouTube audio in the background if you ditch the official YouTube app and instead opt for Safari.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1. Open Safari and enter YouTube.com in the address bar.
Step 2. Search for the video whose audio you want to listen in the background.
Step 3. Once the video is playing, open up a new tab by hitting the + sign on the top right hand corner in Safari.
Step 4. Open up any website in the new tab you just opened. Literally, any website.
Step 5. With the new tab active, and on-screen, swipe up to go to the home screen. Your YouTube audio will still be there.
It’s very, very obvious that this is a bug and will most likely be ‘fixed’ in some software update as YouTube really does not like playing audio in the background on iPad.
And yes, in case you are wondering, this technique does not work on the iPhone. I tried it several times. But on iPadOS running iOS 13.6.1 update, it works every single time without fail.
Obviously, if you are using any desktop OS, like Windows or macOS, you don’t have to worry about such a thing at all. Just minimize the browser all you want, and your audio will stay there.
