YouTube said today that its Premium subscribers using iOS are currently receiving support for the iOS 14 picture-in-picture mode. All U.S YouTube users running iOS will eventually get this mode regardless if they have a Premium subscription or not. Explaining what picture-in-picture does, YouTube said in a statement that, “Picture-in-Picture (PiP) allows users to watch YouTube videos in a small mini player while simultaneously browsing outside of the YouTube app on their mobile device.”
YouTube reiterated what we said in the first paragraph. “We’re starting to roll out PiP (picture-in-picture) for YouTube Premium members on iOS and plan to launch PiP for all U.S. iOS users as well.” With this feature, YouTube users will be able to shut the YouTube app and continue viewing the video that they were watching from a small pop-up window.
There had been certain workarounds that YouTube users with an iPhone could use on mobile Safari to get PiP to run. That would include asking the mobile browser to run the desktop version of YouTube. That workaround has been blocked and frankly, based on what the Google unit is saying today, there really is no reason to put together a workaround for YouTube PiP on iOS.
Android users viewing YouTube for free already have had the ability to view YouTube video using PiP for multitasking. For years, YouTube had constantly tried to get iPhone users to sign up for the Premium service by promoting PiP multitasking. But soon, even YouTube non-subscribers will be able to use PiP to multitask in the U.S.