YouTube Rolls Out Official Picture-In-Picture Support on iOS for Premium Subscribers

Google has begun rolling out official picture-in-picture support for YouTube on iOS as an “experimental” feature for YouTube Premium subscribers.

YouTube

In June, YouTube announced it would be bringing picture-in-picture to iOS. Now, it seems the much-demanded feature is finally available, though only for YouTube Premium subscribers for the time being.

Here’s how to try it out:

  1. Open www.youtube.com/new on a web browser.
  2. Scroll down to look for “Picture-in-picture on iOS” and then select try it out.
  3. You will be asked to sign in to your YouTube account.
  4. Then play a video on YouTube and swipe up or press the home button to close the app.
  5. The video will continue playing in a mini player.
  6. Locking your phone screen while watching PiP will pause the video, but you can resume it via the lock screen media controls.

Thankfully, picture-in-picture won’t be an experimental or premium-only feature for long. Back in July, the company announced that, while the feature will come to YouTube Premium subscribers first, it will be available to all iOS users eventually:

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. We’re starting to roll out PiP for YouTube Premium members on iOS and plan to launch PiP for all US iOS users as well.

At $10 USD/month, YouTube Premium also offers offline playback, YouTube Music and other perks. Google says YouTube Premium customers can try out PiP exclusively until October 31.

Now that the feature is starting to make its way to YouTube Premium subscribers, the rest of YouTube users will hopefully not be too far behind.

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