Everything worth asking first

Paste your playlist link and press play. It runs from the first song to the last on one quiet screen — no suggestions, no wall of thumbnails, nothing nudging you somewhere else.

No — Mehfil plays one song straight into the next with nothing in between, and shows no advertising of its own. Most songs play from a plain audio file that carries no ads at all; only the few available solely as a video carry whatever that video carries.

Yes — Spotify, Apple Music, JioSaavn, Gaana and Deezer. Paste the link and it plays your playlist start to finish. You do not need an account on any of them, and you do not have to sign in anywhere.

It should. The song, the artwork and the play controls appear on your lock screen, and your headphone buttons work as you would expect. Phones normally put a page to sleep the moment you leave it, which is what used to stop the music — so Mehfil now holds the page open for as long as something is playing, and lets go the moment you pause. If your phone does stop it anyway, pressing play on the lock screen or in the notification starts it again, and coming back to Mehfil picks up at the exact second it stopped. One exception: a song only available as a video cannot play once you leave, and Mehfil says so under the title — leave anyway and it moves on to the next song that can keep going. Adding Mehfil to your home screen makes all of this more reliable, and iPhones are stricter than Android.

A thousand songs from one YouTube playlist, or five thousand once you sign in — which is longer than any playlist most people ever finish. A playlist brought across from Spotify, Apple Music, JioSaavn, Gaana or Deezer is however long that service publishes in one go, which for most is the whole thing. If songs are left out, Mehfil says so on the queue rather than quietly dropping them.

When lyrics are available, yes — each line lights up as it is sung, and you can tap any line to jump to that moment. Some songs have no lyrics to show, and a few have words that are not timed, so those simply appear as text.

Links to YouTube playlists and videos, YouTube Music playlists and albums, and playlists, albums or single songs from Spotify, Apple Music, JioSaavn, Gaana and Deezer. YouTube Mixes work too. Your personal lists — Watch Later, Liked Videos — cannot be opened here, because they are private to your account, and Mehfil will say so if you paste one.

No to both. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to pay. The playlists you save stay on your own device; signing in is optional, and all it does is make them follow you to your other devices.

Less often than it used to. If a song will not play one way, Mehfil tries it another before giving up, so most of the ones that were skipped before now play. A song that is genuinely unavailable — taken down, private, or blocked in your country — is passed over rather than sat on, and the queue carries on.

Not directly — YouTube decides the resolution and does not accept requests from outside its player. What you can change is the size of the video, under Speed while watching. A smaller picture is sent a lighter stream, so it is the thing to reach for on a weak connection.