YouTube is adding background playback and offline downloads to YouTube Premium Lite, its $7.99-per-month subscription. With the change, you’ll be able to keep YouTube videos going while you use another app on your phone or save videos to watch when you’re offline.
YouTube’s cheaper subscription is getting background play and downloads
YouTube Premium Lite will have two new perks at no extra charge.
YouTube Premium Lite will have two new perks at no extra charge.
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
YouTube Premium Lite came to the US just about a year ago as a more affordable way to watch YouTube with fewer ads, but it lacked background playback and offline downloads. In its blog post, the company said that it had “heard feedback about wanting these additional features included in the service.” The features are rolling out beginning Tuesday and will be available everywhere that Premium Lite is in “the coming weeks.”
With YouTube Premium Lite, “most” videos are ad-free, but you might still see ads with music content, Shorts, and “when you search or browse,” according to YouTube. If you want to go fully ad-free with YouTube and YouTube Music, you’ll need to pay for the full YouTube Premium subscription, which costs $13.99 per month. (YouTube also offers Premium plans for families and for students.)
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
Most Popular
Most Popular
- Xbox overhauls its PC, web, and cloud apps with a faster design
- Anker’s new window-mounted camera monitors the outside of your home from within it
- I’ve reviewed almost every Android foldable this year — here’s how the iPhone Duo compares
- After printing 40,000 whistles, this is the 3D printer I’d buy
- The Enough Phone is made by and for people fed up with big screens
