@abbyhitter It was less than a decade ago when we could lock our phones and YouTube continued to play music without a hitch. Google greedfully locked that “feature” behind it’s paywall to make YT Music more attractive. I’ve been using this hack ever since though:
1. Download Firefox
2. Install an ad blocker like uBlock Origin as a FF extension
3. Use YT through Firefox
4. After your video starts minimize FF or lock your screen. The video will of course stop playing.
5. Hit play outside of FF using any method you have available, whether that be on your headset, your car’s stereo, using the convenient shortcut from the phone, etc.
As long as you don’t have a bunch of other open apps chewing up available memory and processing power, it’ll play where you left off. I discovered this by accident shortly after Google started this garbage practice to push you to YT Music/Red, and have been doing it across three different phones in that time. I’ve never tried it on an iPhone, but it worked great on BlackBerry (RIP) and Android.