YouTube is synonymous with online video. As such, it’s a great resource to find music by your favorite artists, instructional videos, and even video podcasts. You may, however, have noticed that when you press the Home button, the app quits and you are no longer able to watch or listen to the video playing in the background.
Actually, that’s wrong. You *can* in fact listen to a YouTube video in the background, with a fairly neat workaround, brought to you by a frequent reader of Cult of Mac.
Launch the YouTube app and find a music video, or one with an audio track you want to listen to in the background. Once the video starts playing, press the Home button on the bottom of your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. The YouTube app will quit playing, as usual. Do not feel disheartened.
Simply double press on the Home button to bring up the multitasking bar, swipe to the right to find the media player buttons. Notice the YouTube app icon to the right? That shows you’ve got the app ready to roll. Simply tap the right-facing triangle play button, and your video will restart, letting you listen to the audio without seeing the app itself or the video therein.
Now you can pull up that crazy long podcast you’ve been meaning to listen to, play it in the background, and continue to surf the web, write emails, whatever – anything that will allow music to play in the background. As a bonus, you can even get playlists to work with this technique, but you’ll have to hit the forward button in the media player to go to the next track in the playlist. All in all, though, a pretty slick trick.
Thanks, Barry!
