If you want to watch content on YouTube without ads, then you have just one official option: a subscription for YouTube Premium. For a price of about $14 per month, subscribers get an ad-free experience and some other benefits, including access to YouTube Music, background playback on mobile devices and also downloads.
Google introduced YouTube Premium Lite as a cheaper option in some regions. It is not entirely ad-free though, and up until now, did not support any of the extras that come with a Premium subscription.
This meant no options to download videos for offline playback or to play videos in the background on mobile.
Google tried to block third-party solutions that allowed background play recently, but as usually, it did not work out too well.
This is changing though. Google announced today that downloads and background play are rolling out to Lite subscribers, for the most part. There is this little asterisk behind the feature that informs you that this is not unlocked for all videos.
Here are the details:
- Advertisement: Still shows up on music content, Shorts, when searching or browsing.
- Background play: Not available for Shorts or music content, or user-generated content that includes content from music partners.
- Downloads: Not available for Shorts or music content, or user-generated content that includes content from music partners.
In other words, if you want to download regular videos or play these videos in the background on mobile, you are fine as a YouTube Lite subscriber. However, if you want to play music in the background or download your favorite songs, then you still can’t do it.
Not that great for many users. I would assume that many use background playback for music, but I could be wrong.