During my bus commute to work every day I spend a large amount of time listening to podcasts on my iPhone. And while video podcasts can be great, sometimes I just don’t have the stomach to hold my iPhone to my face for 40 minutes on the bus.

The thing is that a lot of my video podcasts (diggnation, TED Talks, Wine Library TV) are great to listen to with just audio. And in fact I find the extra battery life saved can be a welcome benefit. Well, about two weeks ago I figured out how to listen to audio from video’s on the iPhone with the phone locked. Here’s how:

1. Start your video from the iPhone iPod app
2. Lock the phone. At this point your video and audio will stop
3. Double tap your home button to bring up iPod controls in locked mode
4. Select play and the audio from your video will start playing while the phone is locked

I’m not sure if this tip is published but it’s been super useful for me. Hope it helps you all out too.

Update: Just realized these steps also work if you want to listen to audio only with the phone unlocked. Simply do the above and then unlock your phone, wala!