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It’s still working for me?

At least you can go to the desktop site and do it from there
 
Fair enough. I started paying for Premium. Got fed up with the ads and I DO watch a lot of YouTube. Worth the price.

EDIT: I think YouTube removed this feature to get more people to sign up to Premium.
It doesn’t even work with YouTube premium on iOS 14.

They give it away for free on android.
 
I’m surprised they didn’t do this sooner... now mine immediately pops back into the viewer the instant I tap the PiP icon. I was so happy during the beta series with this feature. I even got used to using the desktop site in Safari. That’s stupid that Apple allows them to detect if the video is playing in PiP and disable it, if that’s the case here. YouTube is now blocking a native feature of the device in the browser. That’s ridiculous. They might be able to get away with that in the app, and skirt the specific App Store guideline about blocking native features behind a paywall, since they likely don’t use Apple’s player, but in the browser? That’s stupid. I really hope this is a bug. YouTube’s app has gotten crazy with the length and frequency of ads and the insanely annoying prompts for a free trial of YouTube Premium when I no longer qualify for it. It has also been incredibly buggy. That’s part of the reason it was easier for me to switch to the browser. 90% of the time, my main feed would only load like 6 videos and then it wouldn’t load anymore as I continued scrolling.

Edit: looks like it still works on the iPad, but not on the iPhone. Maybe it is a bug...
 
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I didn’t realise this, since I haven’t tried PiP on my iPhone. I personally think it’s rather unnecessary, but I guess you should have the option when you start paying more then a tenner to google.

And they still collect all your data. That’s the one thing that really pisses me off.

I use background audio on YT a lot for some of the more data heavy content. GamersNexus and TechnologyConnections have amazing content, but there are often long periods where I am just looking at their faces.

Now the iPad is where it has actual value as I can actually do some work reading or writing something and pull up a video for reference.
 
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I'm bet Apple will eventually discover what bug Google used to block picture in picture support and fix it in an upcoming update
 
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I'm bet Apple will eventually discover what bug Google used to block picture in picture support and fix it in an upcoming update
That’s assuming this whole thing wasn’t enabled on their end to begin with. Seems stupid to me to let the site know that you are viewing in PiP, so hopefully it is a hack that Google used that Apple will fix but I doubt it.
 
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What’s so hard about adding it on YouTube. I don’t understand.

If its added as an app on android mobile then no reason why it can't happen on iOS.

Oh nm... its all apple...that vp9 stuff...something businesses have to figure it out....normal people won't.
 
As others have pointed out, PiP “just works” on the iPad but it doesn’t on the iPhone unless you request the desktop website first, then it works. Auto-playing the next video has also been broken. 😕 Seems too much of a coincidence for these features to suddenly stop working right after iOS 14 launched, so I’m sure Google have done something to deliberately knobble it and were just waiting for iOS 14 to go live.

Google’s YouTube app has always been awful, right down to using their own custom player which puts controls in different places to the standard iOS video player that virtually all apps use. There’s no on-screen volume controls either, terrible UX seems to not bother Google.
 
How does the author of the article fail to mention that PiP is available in the YT app if you pay for YT premium? I mean it's pretty clear here what happened. YT wants people to pay for this feature with a monthly subscription.
 
Google has been leveraging YouTube against other platforms for a long time. Remember when Google refused to build an app for Windows Phone in the early 2010s and sent Microsoft a cease and desist letter asking it to remove the YouTube app they had to build for themselves?
 
There’s a work around! Request the desktop site, then go Picture in Picture. It works 🤩
 
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