Well, it is possible, and especially if you are an iOS and YouTube Premium user, that you are wondering why this news is due, since it has been possible to use PiP on iPhone for a little over a year. Nevertheless, until now this function was available in an experimental mode, which was also only accessible to users who pay for YouTube’s Premium mode. However, this will soon cease to be the case.
This story begins when Apple announces iOS 14, back in June 2020, and tells that one of the novelties of the operating system will be the PiP (Picture in Picture) function, which allows floating content to be displayed in one of the corners of the screen, while the rest of the screen shows another application. A function that paired perfectly with YouTube… until the Google service stopped being compatible, through its app, with this function, just a few months later, coinciding with the arrival of iOS 14 to users.
From then until now, the only way to use Picture in Picture with YouTube on iOS was through an experimental feature that, as I mentioned before, was only available to Premium users. Well, as confirmed by an official YouTube account On twitter, Picture in Picture leaves the experimental mode and, in a matter of days, will become available on all devices with iOS 15.
Are you using an iOS smartphone? If so, the Picture-in-Picture feature is still rolling out & will be available in a matter of days across all iOS 15+ devices. Tweet back @ us if needed.
—TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) April 10, 2022
So, now the big question is, you can imagine, whether Picture in Picture will remain an exclusive feature for YouTube Premium users or if, on the contrary, and in line with what the company announced a few months ago regarding musical content, users of free accounts will also be able to play content in PiP mode while performing other tasks with their iPhone. And, of course, the possible differences in this regard in different geographies.
And it is that, in statements about it, previously YouTube claimed that PiP on iOS would be accessible to free accounts in the US, and later the ability to listen to music in the background was initially rolled out in Canada. Common sense suggests that, sooner or later, it will be extended to the rest of the world, but of course, the key will be in the speed of said deployment, since it would not be the first or the second time that a function of any service takes years to be extended. geographically.
