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YouTube Still Testing Picture-in-Picture on iOS With Premium Subscribers [Updated]

I've been a Premium subscriber since it was called 'Red'. The PiP on my phone has been really nice, honestly.
 
You can already do this for free with Brave browser. I’ve been doing this and getting no commercials for years.
 
_Spinn_ said:
I've been using this to get PiP working in my browser.

www.macrumors.com

iOS 14: Picture in Picture Not Working in YouTube? Here's a Workaround

In iOS 14, Apple added a Picture in Picture mode on iPhone that lets you watch a video in a small screen on your device while you continue to do...
www.macrumors.com www.macrumors.com
Click to expand...

Just use this Safari Extension:
apps.apple.com

‎Vinegar - Tube Cleaner

‎Vinegar is a Safari extension that replaces the YouTube player with a minimal HTML video tag. It removes ads, restores picture-in-picture, and keeps videos playing in the background. Note: The "can read information from webpages" text in the permission section is just unfortunate wording...
apps.apple.com apps.apple.com

Blocks all youtube ads and enables pip in safari.

Google is kind of stupid on this. If they would have just added PiP to Youtube for everyone like they promised, I would have just kept using the app and watching all their stupid ads. Now I'm impatient and am totally bypassing their ads and using pip in Safari with a $3 extension. ?
 
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This is a beta? Thought it was just fully implemented already. Been using it for months and have grown used to it. Gonna hate losing it.
 
vinegarshots said:
Just use this Safari Extension:
apps.apple.com

‎Vinegar - Tube Cleaner

‎Vinegar is a Safari extension that replaces the YouTube player with a minimal HTML video tag. It removes ads, restores picture-in-picture, and keeps videos playing in the background. Note: The "can read information from webpages" text in the permission section is just unfortunate wording...
apps.apple.com apps.apple.com

Blocks all youtube ads and enables pip in safari.

Google is kind of stupid on this. If they would have just added PiP to Youtube for everyone like they promised, I would have just kept using the app and watching all their stupid ads. Now I'm impatient and am totally bypassing their ads and using pip in Safari with a $3 extension. ?
Click to expand...

I’m the same. I’ve moved to using Safari and haven’t seen an advert in ages while still having access to PiP. Google have shot themselves in the foot wasting time making a standard iOS component a subscription-only feature.
 
I don't understand why they need even a date to deactivate it? so they decided to make it a paid feature, we got that, but even that will go off at certain time? what's the point?
 
Incredibly annoying that they actively disable it in Safari. I use a Shortcut to force it, but it's annoying to have to go to the Share Sheet.
 
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vinegarshots said:
Just use this Safari Extension:
apps.apple.com

‎Vinegar - Tube Cleaner

‎Vinegar is a Safari extension that replaces the YouTube player with a minimal HTML video tag. It removes ads, restores picture-in-picture, and keeps videos playing in the background. Note: The "can read information from webpages" text in the permission section is just unfortunate wording...
apps.apple.com apps.apple.com

Blocks all youtube ads and enables pip in safari.

Google is kind of stupid on this. If they would have just added PiP to Youtube for everyone like they promised, I would have just kept using the app and watching all their stupid ads. Now I'm impatient and am totally bypassing their ads and using pip in Safari with a $3 extension. ?
Click to expand...
I use this whenever I listen to video only podcasts because I don't want to be stuck in the YouTube app for 2+ hours. The only issue is that if you have the YouTube app installed (perhaps for notifications), iOS inserts an "Open in YouTube" banner that cannot be touched by ad blocking software. You can target the larger banners you get if the app isn't installed, but apparently the small one is sacred & cannot be messed with.

It feels like they only announce things to be able to say they announced them. YouTube Premium Lite has had no news coverage after the flurry in maybe August. The fact that a music app barely anyone uses (because they likely already have Spotify/Apple Music) is bundled in purely to raise the price to $15/mo just annoys me. You don't really get any exclusive content anymore (AFAIK), so that can't be factored into the price. It's literally just ad-free/background/offline videos & music.
 
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Welp, testing is now done. I wonder when Google will officially announce it… because I am still able to use PiP regardless of it no longer being on the experimental features page.
 
Ludatyk said:
Welp, testing is now done. I wonder when Google will officially announce it… because I am still able to use PiP regardless of it no longer being on the experimental features page.
Click to expand...
Hmm weird. It’s gone from my device as of February 15th 2022.
 
DarkRaider said:
Hmm weird. It’s gone from my device as of February 15th 2022.
Click to expand...

The deadline was February 14th. I checked this morning to see it’s gone from the page, however… I still see it in the Settings app.

92fa5d489e5e193dde324b5174a303f7.png
 
DarkRaider said:
This is what mine is now. Gone on both iPad and iPhone.

View attachment 1959341
Click to expand...

Welp, since its no longer on yours… its only a matter of time YT remove the feature for me.

Once they remove the feature, I’ll go back to Safari and use PiP on it. Did you leave a feedback? I made sure to leave a feedback prior to removal… at least they’ll know how much we as paid customers want it permanently.
 
What exactly are they “testing”? Premium users have had it for at least 2 years. They know it works it has already been tested!! Seriously why hasn’t apple intervened here? It would be like an app requiring a premium payment to use push notifications.

This pisses me off to no end.
checker2010 said:
As a premium subscriber I hope they keep it for premium only. Along with offline downloads and background play, it keeps the subscription as great value.
Click to expand...
It isn’t that good value though. It should be part of the app functionality. Especially at ˜$20AUD a month it is as expensive as Netflix.
 
macman312 said:
What exactly are they “testing”? Premium users have had it for at least 2 years. They know it works it has already been tested!! Seriously why hasn’t apple intervened here? It would be like an app requiring a premium payment to use push notifications.
Click to expand...
I’m confused here. Premium users had what exactly for 2 years? PiP? Because YT rolled out this feature back in August last year.

And I believe Apple hasn’t intervened because YT is a popular app and to fight this doesn’t benefit both YT or Apple.
 
jooish said:
Does it get any scummier than removing a free feature to charge users for it?
Click to expand...
This feature was never free in the first place for it to be removed. Remember that Apple was very late to the PiP game and this feature on youtube is just now coming out for iOS users.

It has probably been delayed due to how Apple handles PiP content. Apple wants to continue to play the PiP content in the background even after the phone is put to sleep. This is a problem because background play has always been an exclusive feature to Youtube Premium. Until Apple adds the option for the PiP video to be turned off after the phone is closed, Youtube cannot add this as a feature for all users.

Why does Youtube want to keep background play as an exclusive Youtube Premium feature? Because they would need an extensive amount of audio-only advertisements for all of the free users. For Youtube Premium users they don't need to deliver any ads.
 
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