YouTube TV Now Has Background Play, Meaning Users Can Listen on Locked Devices

YouTube TV listeners can now listen to shows in the background even if their phone screen is locked, a spokesperson for YouTube said on Tuesday.

“I can confirm that we are running an experiment that enables YouTube TV playback to continue after the phone screen is locked for Android and iOS mobile users,” a YouTube representative told CNET in an email. “If a viewer has the YouTube TV app on and then goes to lock their phone, playback will continue. If users want to avoid background playback, they can pause the video before locking their phone.”

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The feature has been called background play, or background playback, because that’s exactly what happens. If YouTube TV subscribers lock their mobile device, they can continue to hear the soundtrack of whatever they were just watching. Users can leave the app or lock their phone and as long as the app hasn’t been closed or the video paused, they’ll continue to hear the sound.

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This is especially intriguing because YouTube TV is now the home of subscriber-only Sunday Ticket, so football fans could lock their phone and take it with them in the car and still play the audio for whatever game they’d been watching. As a subscriber to both YouTube TV and Sunday Ticket, I tested the feature on my iPhone and was able to hear the highlights from my Sunday games even though my phone screen was locked, and I wasn’t watching the video portion. Skol, Vikings.