YouTube Premium Lite now gets background play and downloadable content

If the lack of background play or downloadable offline content was one of the reasons you were holding off on subscribing to YouTube's most affordable paid subscription plan, then YouTube has some good news for you today.

In an announcement on its website, YouTube shared that both the ability to play content in the background and the ability to download content for offline viewing are coming to its $7.99 per month YouTube Premium Lite subscription plan.

YouTube's ad-free paid subscription plan, YouTube Premium, has been massively successful for the company. 

For $13.99 per month, viewers can have a completely ad-free YouTube experience with YouTube Premium. They also receive subscriber-only features such as background play and content that can be downloaded for offline viewing. YouTube's streaming music service, YouTube Music, is also provided at no additional cost, also completely ad-free.

Last year, the company shared that more than 125 million people subscribe to the service. Around the same time, YouTube also announced that it was rolling out a new, more affordable tier of YouTube Premium called YouTube Premium Lite.

YouTube Premium Lite offers an ad-free experience on most of YouTube's content. Ads still appear on YouTube Shorts, music content, and when a user is searching or browsing for content on the platform. The trade-off is that this cheaper tier is only $7.99 per month.

However, YouTube Premium Lite was also missing those additional features — until now.

YouTube Premium Lite subscribers can now play most YouTube content in the background as well as download most YouTube content for offline viewing. The restrictions on which content can be played in the background or downloaded are the same as the ad-free experience. (YouTube Shorts and music content cannot be viewed with background play or downloaded, for instance). Also, ad-free access to YouTube Music remains a YouTube Premium exclusive.

Still, YouTube says that a significant number of users were requesting that background play and downloadable content features be added to YouTube Premium Lite, and now they are.