Now, one of the biggest features of this paid membership is the ability to play YouTube videos in the background. Over the past few months, we have seen YouTube heavily promoting its YouTube Premium service and the benefits it has over the ad-supported version. This guide will be useful for all of these use cases. Even otherwise, you don't always want to pause a video, especially a live stream, just because you open another app such as WhatsApp to quickly reply to a few texts. Playing videos in the background is convenient if the video part of it is not critical - for instance, if you're listening to music or ASMR. Do you wish to play YouTube videos in the background on your phone without paying the subscription fee for YouTube Premium? Well, the official YouTube app for both Android and iOS doesn't allow this but there is a quick workaround to get this done.