YouTube Premium Lite in India gets background playback and offline download features

Last March, YouTube launched the Premium Lite subscription in limited countries. The pilot version was also available in India. The cheaper alternative to the Premium membership only offered ad-free viewing experience. The popular video-sharing platform had introduced two new features from the premium tier, and those are now rolling out in India. 

YouTube Premium Lite users can now play videos in background and download for offline use

In a blog post, YouTube mentions that it is bringing background playback and offline downloads to the YouTube Premium Lite plan. These will be rolled out to everybody in India in the coming weeks. So, if you don’t see the new features, don’t worry.

The new features bring the experience closer to the YouTube Premium subscription while still maintaining the fee of Rs 89 per month compared to Rs 149. 

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YouTube says that the background playback and offline downloads have been the most requested features by premium lite subscribers. Users can continue to view videos in the background while using other apps and download content to watch it offline. The latter is quite helpful when travelling or in areas with poor network connectivity.

YouTube also notes that the newly introduced features for the cheaper subscription works for most videos on the platform, meaning that some content may still be excluded depending on the licensing restrictions or creator settings. Ads may still appear in the interface such as search results, homepage recommendations, and browsing feeds. 

The standard YouTube Premium still makes sense for an ad-free YouTube Music and additional playback features like queueing, continuous watching, and more. 

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