Google may soon bring playback to its YouTube TV apps on mobile

Soon you may be able to continue listening to your TV shows on YouTube TV even if you can’t watch them. Google appears to be finally bringing playback to its YouTube TV streaming service. The company confirmed that The Verge that it “tries” to enable YouTube TV playback after the phone is locked.

As reported by 9 on 5 Googlethis feature was noticed a few weeks ago by Reddit users who discovered that they can continue to listen to the sound of YouTube TV even after sending the video application to the background on their mobile devices.

Background playback allows you to continue listening to your content when your phone’s screen is off or locked. So, you can still listen to the audio even if you can’t watch the action. This can be useful in many situations, including if you’re following a live sporting event and have to pick up your child from school but want to continue to hear play-by-play while driving safely.

A premium subscription to Google’s YouTube service has a background playback option, and that subscription removes ads from your videos. But not for Google’s live TV service, which starts at $72.99 a month and includes ads. Instead, when you leave the YouTube TV app, the program stops and the audio stops.

Allison Toh, YouTube’s product communications manager, confirmed in an email to The Verge that the company is actually working on bringing it to YouTube TV:

I can confirm that we are running an experiment that allows YouTube TV playback to continue after the phone screen is locked for Android and iOS mobile users.

If the viewer opens the YouTube TV app and locks their phone, playback will continue. If users want to avoid background playback, they can pause the video before turning off their phone.

However, it is not an official feature yet, and Toh did not respond to a question asking if there are any plans to roll it out more widely. He said the test is currently available to a select group of users on all Android and iOS mobile devices.