YouTube is aiming to sweeten the package for its Premium Lite plan by adding two features that are already included in the ad-free Premium subscription. Background Play and Downloads are rolling out to YouTube Premium Lite, the company announced in a blog post on Tuesday. The subscription tier was introduced in the US in March 2025 at $8 a month, offering “most videos” ad-free — with music videos excluded from being free of commercials.  

Premium Lite lets you stream YouTube Kids and YouTube videos for gaming, beauty, podcasts and other non-music content without ads. YouTube Shorts and music content are among the videos where you will still see ad breaks. Upgrading to the Premium subscription brings you everything on YouTube ad-free, with access to YouTube Music Premium included at no extra cost. 

Beginning today and extending into the coming weeks, Lite subscribers around the world can watch videos offline or let them play in the background. The Google-owned media giant said it listened to user feedback on these two features and granted the popular request.

If you’d been using a workaround to play YouTube in the background while doing other tasks or with your screen locked, but your usual methods have stopped working, it’s because Google recently cracked down on workarounds, such as ad blocking and playing YouTube videos on other browsers. As the feature is available only to YouTube Premium members, it no longer works in some browsers or on Android and iOS devices. Adding Background Play to Premium Lite may tempt some people to sign up for a paid subscription.