YouTube’s Picture-in-Picture iOS Test Ends for Premium Subscribers; Full Rollout in Coming Months

YouTube’s support account announced in a recently deleted tweet that YouTube Premium subscribers can no longer sign up to test YouTube’s picture-in-picture (PiP) feature on iOS as the testing round has ended. YouTube had earlier told its users that the PiP feature should be available “in a matter of days” across all devices running iOS 15 or later. However, YouTube then clarified that this is for PiP on the YouTube TV app for iOS. On the regular YouTube app for iOS, the feature has been disabled and is no longer available in the list of available experimental features.

A 9to5Google report says that some YouTube users are seeing “the feature you’re trying has been turned off” banner notifying them that the test has ended. The now-deleted tweet from YouTube Support was posted in response to a user asking about a previous PiP test that was only available to YouTube Premium users. Google had released the picture-in-picture mode for its YouTube TV service on iOS, and a Google spokesperson clarified that the tweet was meant for YouTube TV app, The Verge reported. The Team YouTube Twitter account has now posted a new tweet with the correct details.

YouTube initially announced the PiP feature for the YouTube iOS app in June last year. The testing was supposed to end in October, but was extended with a new deadline on April 8. The feature was only available to YouTube Premium subscribers, but the company hopes to make it available for all users soon. The PiP mode in YouTube for iOS is a long-awaited feature. As of now, the feature is only available for Android users. Although this is supposed to be a system level feature, YouTube for iOS doesn’t allow it. Instead, users had to launch YouTube on the browser to make the feature work.

The YouTube PiP mode for iOS is expected to roll out in the coming months, according to Google.