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YouTube Says iOS Picture-in-Picture Coming to All US Users
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Ow... great. Now you can watch ads every 2.5 minutes all the time. Doing whatever you want... but always with ads.
After a long wait, YouTube for iOS is officially gaining picture-in-picture support, allowing all users, non-premium and premium subscribers, to close the YouTube app and continue watching their video in a small pop-up window.
In a statement to MacRumors, YouTube says that picture-in-picture is currently rolling out to all premium subscribers on iOS and that a larger rollout to all US iOS users will take place soon. It's worth noting, again, that this feature will be available to all users, despite some speculation that YouTube may have limited picture-in-picture support for only paying subscribers.
YouTube picture-in-picture has been a constant back and forth game, with it sometimes working via the YouTube website on Safari. Some users have found creative workarounds utilizing Shortcuts to turn off built-in parameters on the YouTube site that disables picture-in-picture. Now, though, with official support rolling out and soon to be more widespread, those workarounds will no longer be needed.
Article Link: YouTube Says iOS Picture-in-Picture Coming to All US Users
There was an update to the YouTube app this morning had hoped it was PIP support but no such luck
Really? I thought it was me cancelling my YouTube subscription last week that triggered this...
What a stupid feature to think is worth charging for. I love PiP but come on YouTube, surely you didn’t think that offering PiP to iOS users only through a Premium subscription was actually worth it? In some ways, it feels like YouTube’s (Google’s) way of screwing over iOS users. I’m glad it’s finally coming to all iOS users but this is pathetically long overdue.
This is ridiculous.
Companies should stop announcing new features before they're ready to go.
They do the same for non US users for android as well. Frustrating
They are the most capricious company in existence, seriously
While YouTube certainly gets most of the blame for how long this has taken — Google is ridiculously slow when it comes to supporting many native iOS features in all of its apps — I think the blame in this case is at least somewhat shared with the music industry.
When Apple added background audio support way back in iOS 4, YouTube actually embraced it pretty quickly, and at first it was free to everyone. However, around the time that YouTube made its agreement with Vevo and the record labels to host music videos, along came the YouTube Premium tier. Background audio playback was switched off for non-paying users to prevent them from using YouTube as a free music player without actually seeing the ads that were being used to pay the record labels.
Of course, YouTube could have added PiP support for premium users at any time, so that's entirely on them, but the restrictions on free users strike me as something that's definitely label-related. According to what Google told 9to5Mac, free users in the US won't be able to use PiP for music content at all, and there are probably some similar advertising or licensing restrictions that prevent it from being easily made available outside of the US.
When Apple added background audio support way back in iOS 4, YouTube actually embraced it pretty quickly, and at first it was free to everyone. However, around the time that YouTube made its agreement with Vevo and the record labels to host music videos, along came the YouTube Premium tier. Background audio playback was switched off for non-paying users to prevent them from using YouTube as a free music player without actually seeing the ads that were being used to pay the record labels.
Of course, YouTube could have added PiP support for premium users at any time, so that's entirely on them, but the restrictions on free users strike me as something that's definitely label-related. According to what Google told 9to5Mac, free users in the US won't be able to use PiP for music content at all, and there are probably some similar advertising or licensing restrictions that prevent it from being easily made available outside of the US.
I had a similar situation with GoodReader app.. they tried to make users pay for Dark Mode when Apple first introduced it, which didn’t go very well. It was tons of complaints on the AppStore and later the devs pushed out an update to remove the feature from a paywall.
And this is why YT is in a bad position with this PiP feature on iOS/iPadOS… because it can’t be behind a paywall when it’s a standard feature for Apple devices. But the way it’s being rolled out is making matters worst.
I don’t know… not only is this label-related, but Apple has their hands in this as well. Because PiP is a standard feature for Apple devices, I’ve yet to see developers charge for PiP support.
Well, technically speaking, the wording of the App Store Review Guidelines offers some wiggle-room by the use of the word "Monetizing."...
This could be construed to mean that developers can't charge solely or specifically for these features, but it doesn't necessarily preclude them from unlocking them as a smaller part of a much larger premium offering. After all, there have been apps out there for years that offer at least some push notification features that are only available to subscribers, or in paid versions. However, these apps aren't charging specifically to enable push notifications — they're charging for advanced features that require the use of push notifications.
This also seems to be supported in the case of GoodReader as well. Apple didn't force it to remove the paywall for Dark Mode, as that would have happened much sooner. GoodReader simply realized how unpopular the choice was and came to its senses.
That could be why Google is offering it to non-Premium users as well. Even though its US-only, that would probably be enough to satisfy any possible accusations that it's charging for PiP support. Offering PiP support to its free tier while also satisfying the labels would be more challenging, and perhaps Google held back on implementing PiP at all until it could bring it to everybody.
Honestly, though, I blame most of this on the glacial pace at which Google embraces iOS features. After all, it took five years for Gmail to add split-screen multitasking, which strikes me as an even more basic feature (although I'm not a developer, so I don't want to judge too harshly).
However, it could also have something to do with support for the YouTube-specific VP9 codec not arriving until iOS 14. AFAIK that's only necessary for 4K support, but there could be some other issues that made PiP support more complicated without it. Again, though, IANAD, so who knows? 🤷♂️
Oh yeah, it fails to detect rotation from time to time and it's super annoying. I discovered if I minimize the video (within the app) and bring it back up, it starts working again.
I wish there were a way to enable rotation lock for everything EXCEPT photos and video.
Never in my life do I want to use a UI on a widescreen phone in landscape.
Well, I doubt Apple forced their hand. Just as you mention devs can’t charge solely for that feature alone… GoodReader was smart enough to attach other features behind it. Perhaps, that’s why their update was submitted successfully.
Some developers attach themes behind paywall, but Dark Mode should be something that‘s standard.
Regardless if Google offer it to premium subscribers only… it’s still going to cause some issues for Apple. GoodReader isn’t as popular as YT, but there will be discussions behind the scenes from developers… why is YT allowed to charge for PiP support.
Umm… I don’t think YT-specific VP9 is an issue. I’m not sure how their codec plays apart in PiP, I’ve been doing PiP through a shortcut from YT app for awhile.
Right, but like GoodReader, this would simply be part of the YouTube Premium package. YouTube isn't charging for PiP support — it's simply only offering it on the same Premium subscription tier that it's had for years. Premium is still way much more about things like ad-free viewing and offline playback than it would be about PiP.
In fact, one could make the same argument about Background Audio, since that's been restricted to Premium users from the very beginning, and yet it's a core iOS feature as well.
Yeah, I don't think so either, to be honest, but it's so hard to believe that Google took five years to add PiP support in the first place that I'm grasping at straws for logical technical explanations.
But, like I said, it also took it five years to add split screen support in Gmail, so I guess I really shouldn't expect there to be a logical reason for the delay 😏
It seems that this "good news" was just a mistake. YouTube claims the PiP is only available on Android:
It certainly seemed fishy to me that they'd announce something and then it wouldn't work for so many days. I guess someone mis-spoke.
Ah well, it was good to have hope while it lasted.
It certainly seemed fishy to me that they'd announce something and then it wouldn't work for so many days. I guess someone mis-spoke.
Ah well, it was good to have hope while it lasted.
It's more likely someone from the YouTube support team on Twitter hasn't gotten the memo... 😏
Several other folks on Twitter have been reporting it working in the iOS YouTube app, but like most of the things Google rolls out on the back-end, it's likely proceeding at a glacial pace. When Dark Mode came to Gmail a couple of years ago it took several months before many people saw it show up in their own accounts.
What's inadmissible is rolling out the function and after one day turning it off. Apple should make some type of statement about that, Google should't be able to deactivate a perfectly working function of the app, based in a OS function, without an app update.
