YouTube's picture-in-picture mode appears to not work on Android and iOS, and Google is "actively investigating"

YouTube’s Picture-in-Picture feature on mobile devices does not work for some
The feature became available to all users earlier this year.
Google says it is investigating the issue and working to fix it

YouTube’s picture-in-picture (PiP) mode on Android and iOS is one of the most useful features the app offers (now available to all users, Premium or not), but a widespread bug appears to have broken the functionality on phones.

As reported by 9to5Google, there are several reports that PiP mode does not activate when exiting the YouTube app. The audio continues to play in the background, but there is no sign of the small video overlay.

We’ve had mixed experiences with this on the TechRadar team: for some it works well, for others it doesn’t. However, it is definitely a genuine problem at least for some users, because Google has acknowledged that there is a bug.

What happens next?

Picture in Picture Mode
from r/youtube

We’ve scoured the YouTube and Reddit help forums and so far there doesn’t seem to be any proper solution to the issue. If this is something you’re experiencing, you’ll have to wait until Google releases a fix.

According to Reddit threads that have appeared discussing the bug, it is affecting both free and paying Premium users, so you won’t be able to recover PiP when trying the paid subscription.

One user reports that the feature has been “performing poorly for several weeks” and that PiP sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. If that’s the case, it may 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 on the issue on the YouTube Help forum. Hopefully, with Google engineers on the case, it’s a bug that will be fixed sooner rather than later.

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