“Background playback” is behind the premium paywall; NOBODY gets YouTube PIP support on iOS; such a shame.
I repeat, even if you pay for premium you simply can’t do PIP using the official app. You can however use a browser and use PIP that way I think (there used to be some weird workaround but I’m not sure if it still exists).
Edit: I was (happily) wrong!
I see now, they added it halfway though 2022 and I needed to go into settings and explicitly enable it. I’m a happy camper now! Thanks for the correction
If you don’t want to pay for premium, I recommend (and use) uYou+ as a sideloaded app. It has PiP capabilities w/o needing premium, along with a built-in video downloader, sponsorblock, and adblock.
Assuming it works the same way as on android you just start playing a video then switch out of the YouTube app without stopping playback. In fact I just read the Google help page “Using picture-in-picture on your mobile device” and it says exactly that for any mobile device and only goes into iPhone Vs android specific details when it comes to ensuring you’ve not turned off any default on settings that are required for it to work.
My initial experience is that it was missing, then tested, then removed again.
Since you don’t have premium and can still use the feature on iOS, that means they were forced to make it available in general to iOS users. It was off by default for me though, so maybe they made it work but just didn’t turn it on by default?
Someone else above was saying that Apple has rules about this, and another poster was saying that on Android you need premium for PIP. So maybe iOS did without it for years and then they were forced to add it for all iOS users regardless of the premium sub.
“Background playback” is behind the premium paywall; NOBODY gets YouTube PIP support on iOS; such a shame.
I repeat, even if you pay for premium you simply can’t do PIP using the official app. You can however use a browser and use PIP that way I think (there used to be some weird workaround but I’m not sure if it still exists).
Edit: I was (happily) wrong! I see now, they added it halfway though 2022 and I needed to go into settings and explicitly enable it. I’m a happy camper now! Thanks for the correction
Premium absolutely does give you PIP on iOS. I took this screenshot just now 😊
Fascinating… because I’ve been trying to get this to work for like years… literal years. I’m very happy to be wrong about this.
HOW THE FUCK DO YOU DO THAT?
If you don’t want to pay for premium, I recommend (and use) uYou+ as a sideloaded app. It has PiP capabilities w/o needing premium, along with a built-in video downloader, sponsorblock, and adblock.
Link: https://github.com/qnblackcat/uYouPlus
Assuming it works the same way as on android you just start playing a video then switch out of the YouTube app without stopping playback. In fact I just read the Google help page “Using picture-in-picture on your mobile device” and it says exactly that for any mobile device and only goes into iPhone Vs android specific details when it comes to ensuring you’ve not turned off any default on settings that are required for it to work.
I see now, they added it halfway though 2022 and I needed to go into settings and explicitly enable it. I’m a happy camper now!
Thank you for the correction.
I don’t even have premium? I’m on iOS, I can’t keep up with what’s being criticized as real or not.
Seems that you don’t even need Premium!
Sounds like Apple may have forced their hand behind the scenes.
https://9to5google.com/2022/07/11/youtube-pip-iphone-ipad/
My initial experience is that it was missing, then tested, then removed again.
Since you don’t have premium and can still use the feature on iOS, that means they were forced to make it available in general to iOS users. It was off by default for me though, so maybe they made it work but just didn’t turn it on by default?
Someone else above was saying that Apple has rules about this, and another poster was saying that on Android you need premium for PIP. So maybe iOS did without it for years and then they were forced to add it for all iOS users regardless of the premium sub.
I will say it doesn’t work predictable with all my apps brought back into view. WefWef is one of the few where it does it every time.
I don’t have premium and I get PiP on everything but music.
Even then, sometimes live shows will work or lesser known musicians.
You don’t even get PiP on Android without premium.