YouTube Premium’s cheapest tier just got better — with background play and downloads

• YouTube is adding downloads and background play to its Premium Lite plan
• It's the first upgrade to the Premium Lite plan since its inception last year
• Music fans will still have to upgrade however, as ad-free music videos are still paywalled into the Premium Plan

YouTube locks tons of features behind the walls of its rather pricey Premium tier, but now it’s bringing a few of them over to its more affordable Premium Lite plan.

The platform announced on its blog that offline downloads and background play are both being integrated into YouTube Premium Lite, and are being rolled out now. This is a big upgrade; when YouTube launched Premium Lite in March 2025, it offered ad-free viewing for most videos (with the exception of music videos and music content) and not much else. Premium Lite subscribers don’t get the YouTube Music ...