Back in 2014, Google launched YouTube Red, a paid streaming service exclusively available for users in the United States, Australia, Mexico, New Zealand and South Korea. This service provides ads-free streaming of all YouTube videos with offline playback and the ability to listen to videos in the background.

It means that you can turn off the screen of your phone or lock it and still listen to the songs or whatever the video you were playing. Pretty cool, huh?

Why pay? When you can enjoy for Free:

First of all, this service is not available in Pakistan and even if you use a VPN to get USA IP address, you will still have to pay a monthly fee. But why pay when you can get the background playback feature for free?

For Android Users:

While most of the Android users, use Chrome or the default Android browser (also based on Chrome), there are many others available in the Play Store. If you want to listen to songs while your mobile phone screen is off, just download Firefox browser and open YouTube.com on it.

Make sure it doesn’t take you to the YouTube app, if it does go to app settings and clear all defaults.

You can make playlists while being singed in on YouTube app and then open your same Google account on Firefox and listen to these playlists while your phone is locked.

For iOS Users:

iPhone or iPad users don’t have to download anything, just open your default Safari browser and go to YouTube.com. Make sure it doesn’t open the YouTube app, then play your favorite songs or podcasts and turn off the screen.

The video playback will be stopped, but don’t worry just press the home button and go to control center, you will see the option to play the video and control volume. Press play button and then you can turn off the screen while enjoying the audio playback.

Download YouTube videos in MP3:

If you want to listen while being offline you can convert these videos in MP3 format and download on your phone. To do this copy the video link and go to this website, paste the link and get MP3 format file downloaded to your phone.

Do keep in mind that converting or downloading certain YouTube videos without prior approvals might be illegal.