This iPhone Browser Lets You Play YouTube Videos in the Background Without Paying
YouTube hides some of its best mobile features, like background playback and picture-in-picture, behind its expensive $14/month YouTube Premium subscription. And it’s notorious for stopping free apps and workarounds. If you’re on Android, you can use the third-party app NewPipe to get around these limitations. But on the walled garden that is the iPhone? There's very little you can do. Even if you try to play videos using Safari, they’ll stop playing as soon as you lock your screen.
Which is why it’s a big deal that Vivaldi, the privacy-focused browser, now supports background playback for YouTube, and many other video sites that expressly block it. If you’re okay using YouTube on the web instead of an app (your feed will still be the same), you can now enjoy a paid YouTube Premium feature for free. Even if you only use this feature for long podcast episodes or long videos, it might be worth it.
How to enable and use background playback in Vivaldi for iPhone
For this feature to work, you’ll first need to update your Vivaldi app to the latest version. As long as you’re running version 7.4 or higher, you’re good.
Next, it’s time to enable a specific setting, without which, this feature won’t work. First, click the Vivaldi icon from the toolbar, then choose the Settings icon.
Go to General and enable the Allow media playback in background option.
With that, background playback is now enabled.
To try it out, go to the YouTube website in Vivaldi and open a video. Once it starts playing, go back to the Home Screen or lock your iPhone or iPad completely. The playback will still continue, as intended, in the background.
When you lock the screen, you’ll also see media controls, like when you use a music app (or when you use YouTube Premium). So you'll be free to pause the video, or move forwards or backwards freely, without opening Vivaldi again. Unfortunately, Vivaldi still won’t stop ads, so for that, take a look at our best ad-free YouTube apps.