The most reliable way to access YouTube audio offline without violating terms of service is through an official subscription.

This allows you to download songs and playlists directly within the YouTube Music app for offline listening. Note that these files are encrypted and can only be played within the app.

Advanced users can create custom workflows in the Shortcuts app to extract audio from videos. Common community-made shortcuts like JAYD or Music Grabber automate the process of fetching audio from a URL and saving it to your local storage. Online Converters and Third-Party Tools

For a technical but powerful approach, you can install a terminal emulator like a-Shell and use the command-line tool yt-dlp to extract high-quality audio directly on your device. Summary of Popular Methods (2026)