How to play videos and music in YouTube with the screen off

If you're at all like me then YouTube is just as important a music player as Spotify or SoundCloud. I use it all the time simply for listening to music whether I'm watching the music video or not. And sometimes I'm watching a documentary that I really only want to listen to, like an interview, so it's massively annoying when the audio cuts out if the screen goes off. Unfortunately my measly Nexus 5battery isn't good enough to keep the screen on unnecessarily. The good news is that there's now a trick for keeping the music or audio playing in YouTube when your screen is off.  

The best music video library on the planet. Even with the lights off. / © AndroidPIT/YouTube

As you probably already know, there's no way to do this officially through the YouTube app yet. But that doesn't mean that you can't get YouTube music to continue playing in the background when the display is off. Thanks to the clever folk over at XDA Developers, we can tell you what you need to do to play YouTube videos with the screen off. It's a modified version of an old YouTube app, but if you know of a newer version with the same functionality be sure to let me know in the comments.

How to play music in YouTube with the screen off 

If YouTube is installed natively on your device (meaning it was pre-installed), you must be rooted to uninstall it: just go into your file manager and remove the file from /system/app/YouTube.apk as well as any Play Store updates from /data/app/. Of course if you're replacing it as a system app then you're going to need SuperUser permissions and your phone also has to be capable of 1080p/720p video decoding, as this modded version of the app requires those codecs.

Just jump into your file manager and remove any mention of the YouTube app. / © ANDROIDPIT

If you installed YouTube yourself later on, then you can uninstall it easily enough: just go into your Settings, Apps and find YouTube and uninstall it. Once you have the existing version of YouTube removed, you can install the new modded version. You even have the option for a dark themed or Holo blue inverted YouTube app.

1. The steps are very simple and it all takes no more than a couple of minutes:

2. Download the modded YouTube 4.4.11 APK from XDA Developers.

3. Copy the APK to the SD card on your device and run it from your phone.

4. Install the application as normal.

5. When you open the app, start any video and head to Advanced Settings, and all the way down click on "Screen off playback". That's it!

Once you've installed the modded YouTube app you'll see ''Screen Off Playback'' in the Advanced Settings. / © ANDROIDPIT

I'm super happy since I installed this mod, because I use YouTube all the time, so saving battery with the screen off is a pretty big deal. So what are you waiting for?!