- YouTube picture-in-picture on mobile is broken for some
- The feature was made available to all users earlier this year
- Google says it’s investigating the issue and working on a fix
YouTube picture-in-picture (PiP) mode on Android and iOS is one of the most useful features the app offers — available to all users now, Premium or otherwise — but a widespread bug appears to have broken the functionality on phones.
As reported by 9to5Google, there are several reports of PiP mode not being activated when exiting the YouTube app. The audio continues to play in the background, but there is no sign of the little video overlay.
We’ve had mixed experiences with this on the TechRadar team: for some it works fine, for others it’s broken. But it’s definitely a real problem for some users at least because Google has acknowledged that there’s a bug.
“Our teams are actively investigating the issue, and we’ll update this thread as soon as we have more information,” explains a Google representative, who says that while most bug reports come from iPhone owners, the issue also occurs on Android.
What happens then?
Image in image mode
from r/youtube
We’ve scoured YouTube’s help forums and Reddit, and so far there doesn’t seem to be a proper solution to the problem. If this is something you’re experiencing, you’ll just have to wait until Google issues a fix.
According to the Reddit threads that have surfaced discussing the bug, it affects both free users and those paying for Premium, so you won’t be able to bring PiP back by giving the paid subscription a try.
One poster reports that the feature has been “working for weeks” and that PiP sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. If so, it might be worth restarting your phone and trying again – although there are no guarantees.
The best place to look for updates on PiP functionality is the official thread for the issue on the YouTube Help Forum. Hopefully, with Google’s engineers on the case, this is a bug that will be fixed sooner rather than later.
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