Oliver Haslam on April 12, 2022, 1:16 am

YouTube Seems To Have No Idea When It’ll Bring Picture-in-Picture To iPhones And iPads

YouTube’s addition of picture-in-picture (PiP) support to iPhone and iPad versions of its app has been a farce from minute one but things took a whole new turn over the last few days.

First, YouTube stopped its previous feature experiment that allowed users to enable it on a per-account basis. Then, the YouTube Twitter account said that the feature would be available to everyone “in the coming days.”

Except, it won’t. Because YouTube seems to have absolutely no idea when it will be bringing PiP support to iPhones and iPads.

We know that because the company has since tweeted to clarify its position — when it said PiP support is coming, it actually meant for YouTube TV. Not YouTube itself. Which is just beyond laughable at this point.

What all of this means is that we currently have no idea what YouTube is doing. For now, PiP support is only available “to Premium members on Android phones” and that’s it. If or when that will change is anyone’s guess, least of all YouTube’s.

The ability to watch content using PiP is a big deal because it allows people to watch content while doing something else, like working on emails for example. It’s a fairly simple feature that countless other apps offer. Why YouTube is incapable of it isn’t clear, although it seems likely it’s related to ads, because, Google.