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 pricey $14-a-month YouTube Premium subscription. And it’s notorious for stopping free apps and workarounds. If you’re on Android, you can use a third-party app called NewPipe to get around these restrictions. But in the walled garden that is the iPhone? There’s not much you can do. Even if you try to play videos using Safari, they’ll stop as soon as you lock the screen.
That’s why it’s so important that Vivaldi, the privacy-focused browser, now supports background playback for YouTube and many other video sites that explicitly block it. If you’re okay with using YouTube on the web instead of the app (your feed will remain the same), you can now use the paid YouTube Premium feature for free. Even if you only use the feature for long podcasts or long videos, it may be worth it.
How to Enable and Use Background Playback in Vivaldi for iPhone
For this feature to work, you first need to update the Vivaldi app to the latest version. As long as you’re running version 7.4 or higher, you’re good to go.
Next, it’s time to enable a specific setting without which this feature won’t work. First, click on the Vivaldi icon in the toolbar, then select the Settings icon.
Go to the General section and enable the Allow media playback in the background option.
Background playback is now enabled.
To try it out, go to the YouTube site in Vivaldi and open a video. Once it starts playing, go back to the home screen or lock your iPhone or iPad completely. Playback will continue as expected in the background.
When you lock the screen, you also see the media controls, like when you’re using the music app (or when you’re using YouTube Premium). This way, you’ll be able to pause the video or skip forward or back without having to open Vivaldi again. Unfortunately, Vivaldi still doesn’t stop ads, so take a look at our best YouTube apps without ads for that.