YouTube has tons of uses – primarily video watching, but often podcasts and music can be found on the great video behemoth. While iOS 7 has plenty of music players, sometimes you want to listen to something you’ve found on YouTube without killing your battery by leaving the screen on. But when you want to listen (and not watch) a video on your iPhone, what do you do?
Solution #1 – Thanks Apple!
There are actually a few solutions to this. One of the easiest things to do is to open the YouTube video in Safari. The video will play in full screen. Now lock your screen. On the lock screen, pull up from the bottom to open your Control Panel. Now press play! This also works when you take the app out of focus, and not just on the lock screen.
The audio from your video will play, but you can keep the screen locked. How easy! This works specifically because we opened the video in Safari – Apple was kind enough to integrate it’s apps that thoroughly.
Solution #2 – Using the YouTube App
You use the Youtube App. You like the YouTube App, and you don’t want to use Safari. This is actually pretty common, and there’s a solution that won’t make you switch the app that you’re using. After you open a YouTube video in the app, click on share. The video will still play, but now YouTube is prompting you to put in the information for sharing. Now lock your screen! The video should still be playing.
This solution isn’t as elegant as Solution #1, but it does work and doesn’t force you to compromise using the app that you want. This solution isn’t something intended by YouTube, however, so with updates to iOS 7 or the app itself, this solution may not always work.
Solution #3 – Use Musi
Musi? That’s right, we didn’t make a typo. Musi is a streaming app that is specifically for listening to YouTube videos. The app just plays the audio track of the video. If Musi loses focus or the screen locks, the audio keeps playing. It even has additional features like allowing you to make playlists and skipping detection.
Not as quick of a fix as Solution #1 or #2, but it’s free and easy to use, not to mention the app looks great and fits the iOS 7 theme well. If you find yourself wanting to listen to multiple videos or you think you may want to do that in the future, this app is the easiest way to go.
Now that you have a few tools to deal with the YouTube lock screen problem, you can listen to videos worry free! Whichever solution works best for you, enjoy the boost to your music library.