How to re-enable background audio playback for Safari videos in iOS 6

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Remember the good old days, in iOS 5, when you could listen to a video’s audio in the background on your device while multitasking? All you had to do was double tap the Home button, swipe to the left to reveal the iPod controls, and press Play.

But for some reason, Apple disabled this feature in iOS 6, leaving us without a native way to do things like listen to YouTube videos in Safari while texting or browsing Twitter. But the good news is, we’ve come across a fairly easy way to get it back…

Before we get started, I want you to try something. Open Safari (or Chrome), navigate to YouTube.com, and play a video. Now pause the video, close the app, double tap your Home button, swipe to the left and press Play. Did it work? No? Ok, let’s go.

Note: you’ll need to be jailbroken for this tutorial. If your device isn’t jailbroken, click here for more information.

Step 1: open up Cydia and tap the Manage tab located at the bottom of the screen. Select Sources > Edit > Add and type in the following: http://cydia.myrepospace.com/bestguyhaha. Now tap Add Source.

Step 2: once the repo is successfully added, select the Search tab from the bottom of the screen and do a search for BgVideo. This should bring up the tweak, which you’ll install like normal. Then, your device will re-spring.

Step 3: and that’s all there is to it! After your device re-springs, try playing audio from a video in the background by repeating the above-mentioned exercise. It should work this time.

I can only confirm this works with Safari and Chrome, but I’m sure it works with other browsers as well. And while I only tried it with YouTube’s mobile website, the developer says that it’s compatible with all sites that play videos through QuickTime.

Any questions?

Thanks Winona!