Nearly a year after reintroducing Premium Lite, YouTube is giving the lower-cost tier a meaningful boost. The company says subscribers will soon get two long-requested features that were previously locked behind the full Premium plan.
Back in March of 2025, YouTube brought back Premium Lite with a simple promise. Users could watch “most videos” without ads, but that was it. There was no background play and no option to download videos for offline viewing. For many, that made the cheaper plan feel limited. Now that is changing.
In the coming weeks, YouTube will roll out background play and downloads to Premium Lite subscribers in all markets where the plan is available. This means users can keep videos playing while using other apps. They can also save videos and watch them later without an internet connection.
However, YouTube is still careful with its wording. The company continues to say that Premium Lite removes ads from “most videos,” not all content. That remains a key difference between Lite and the full YouTube Premium subscription.
There are other limits as well. According to the fine print, Premium Lite benefits apply to “most non-music content, excluding Shorts.” In addition, ads may still appear when users search or browse the platform. So while the viewing experience improves, it is not completely ad-free.
Even so, this update makes Premium Lite far more attractive. The plan costs less than the full Premium tier, yet it now supports two features many users care about. Background play and downloads are often seen as core premium perks. Bringing them to Lite narrows the gap between the two subscriptions.
