An old resource for listening to music on your mobile is pulling YouTube, although obviously it has a toll to pay: video playback, which inevitably means using more battery. Over the years we have seen different tricks to try to circumvent this reality, one of the most used is to use a browser to turn off the screen while playing (although sooner or later it ends up being blocked).
In fact, the browser had always been a favorite trick to avoid paying for YouTube Premium and having YouTube music without having the video, but then I discovered a free application that is capable of overlaying a practical black screensaver and background playback.
Its name is Black Screen and it is available for free on Google Play Storeyes, at the cost of from time to time an advertisement appears. Note: advertising appears in the app’s configuration interface, but not when it is superimposed on YouTube, so it is neither annoying nor invasive and best of all, there isn’t much of it either.
What is Black Screen and how does it work?
The idea is this: Black Screen does not turn off the screen completely, but rather shows a black background with the time with a very efficient screensaver to save battery (if you have an AMOLED/OLED type panel) and minimize its deterioration. In this way it is possible to play both YouTube videos and content from any other application: podcasts, record video, take selfies…
As soon as you install the application and open it, it asks you for a permission that is essential for its mission: be able to overlay other applications. On the next screen several options appear that we will talk about later, but for now we leave everything as it is and tap on the fuchsia ‘Start’ button.
At this point you will see that the screen is still on, but a small floating lock button has appeared. Now you just have to go where you want to play something, for example a YouTube video, and start it. Then you tap on the lock and that’s it, the screen will turn black while the sound continues to play. I insist, it can be YouTube, but also any other app.
This way you can spend as much time as you want with YouTube playing in the background and when you want to stop listening to music or change playlists, just tap on ‘Unlock’ and you will return to the normal screen.
And now, yes, we return to that main screen of the application where although the default options are fine, Various appearance and performance parameters can be changed such as the style of the clock, the floating button, how many taps you have to give the screen to wake it up, whether or not we want to hide the floating button and the unlock screen. Thus, to avoid accidental touches, we can put three touches to wake up, for example.
The app works fine and although it does not technically turn the screen completely black, it is interesting precisely because of its ability to superimpose itself on everything.
Black Screen
Video screen off
Cover | Assembly with Mockuphone, Youtube icons created by Freepik – Flaticon and another of Erik Mclean in Unsplash