Listening to music or podcasts published on YouTube without having the phone screen on is an aspiration of those people who want to save battery or carry out any other activity at the same time. It is easily solved with a premium YouTube account, but on Xiaomi cell phones and brands associated with this company such as Redmi and Poco, it is not necessary to make such an expense or have to use apps like YouTube Vanced that implement premium YouTube features.
Floating windows on Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO, what are they?
Indeed, the MIUI (13 and 14) or HyperOS customization layer of Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco cell phones has a native function to play videos with the screen off, and not only from YouTube, but also from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or from other similar streaming services.
This function is called Floating Windows and is aimed at multitasking, since it allows you to open applications in small windows that are displayed on top of other applications that are running, with the possibility that if one of them works as a video player you can do it with the screen off, but emitting the corresponding audio.
How to use YouTube as a floating window on Xiaomi?
Follow these steps to activate this function on your Xiaomi, Redmi or POCO phone.
Go to Settings > Special Features and make sure to activate the Floating Windows option. Now go to the Sidebar option and activate the Show while videos are playing option.
From now on, when you play a YouTube video (or any other compatible app) and want to listen to it with the screen off, open the video in question, display the sidebar and press the ear-shaped icon that represents the Play sound function video with the screen off.
Unfortunately this function is not available on low-end Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO terminals such as the Redmi A2.