Picture-in-picture (PiP) is great for us multitaskers. While some prefer to pay full attention to their content, others prefer to keep videos running while attending to other tasks. I frequently have a video playing in PiP on both my iPhone and Mac, while I scan headlines, chat with friends, or take care of any to-do that only requires half my focus.
While there are ways to manually trigger PiP, it’s best on mobile, as most video player apps have adopted a natural method: When you play a video, you can simply leave the app, and the video continues playing in a PiP window. It’s now muscle memory for me on iOS: I head to YouTube, choose a video, and swipe out of the app, knowing my video will keep running as I move to other apps on my iPhone.
YouTube PiP is broken (especially on iOS)
Of course, like most things, PiP is only good when it works. You might have recently tried the exact shortcut I just described, only to find that nothing actually happens. You close out of YouTube, but your video doesn’t follow in a PiP window. (Though it may still continue to play in the background.) And while some of you might be Android users, I’d be willing to bet most are on iPhones. What gives?
As reported by 9to5Google, YouTube is currently experiencing issues with PiP. This isn’t something only a handful of users are dealing with. The problem is apparently so widespread, YouTube has confirmed the issue directly. In a statement on YouTube Help, a Google employee shared the following:
“We’re aware that some of you are experiencing issues with the Picture-in-Picture (PiP) feature failing to trigger when exiting the YouTube app. While the vast majority of these reports are coming from iOS users, we are also seeing a significantly lower volume of reports from Android users…Our teams are actively investigating the issue, and we’ll update this thread as soon as we have more information.” At the time of writing, over 11,600 users hit the “I have the same question” button on this YouTube Help post.
Is there any way to fix PiP in the YouTube app?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there is any workaround. For what it’s worth, PiP was intermittent for me this morning in the YouTube app on iOS. I had no problem swiping out of a video into PiP mode during an ad, but once the video started playing, PiP didn’t work. Not only that, but playback stopped as well. I went back to YouTube, played the video again, and when I left the app this time, PiP kicked in. This continued on and off, not working one time, but working the next.
