YouTube Testing Picture-In-Picture With Premium Subscribers Before Rollout To All iPhone Users

Now, in addition to listening to YouTube videos in the background, YouTube Premium subscribers on iOS will be able to access a picture-in-picture viewing option.

Picture-in-picture yields a tiny, box-shaped mini-player on mobile screens, enabling users to continue watching YouTube videos while doing other things on their iPhones. (The option is not available on iPads, reports 9 To 5 Google).

Picture-in-picture is currently available as an opt-in test exclusively for Premium subscribers, given that one of the perks of membership is the ability to test out experimental features. That said, YouTube has supported picture-in-picture viewing on Android devices since 2018, Techcrunch notes, and back in June said it would eventually be rolling out picture-in-picture to all users.

In order to access the test, Premium subscribers need only navigate to YouTube.com/new, and manually enabling the option. While watching a video, viewers can either swipe up or press home to close the app and continue to watch in a mini-player. The player has rewind, play, pause, and fast forward controls, notes 9 To 5 Google, and it can be moved around the screen or enlarged or minimized with pinching gestures.

The test appears to have a definitive end date of Oct. 31, though it is unclear whether picture-in-picture will become available to all iPhone users at that juncture.