YouTube testing picture-in-picture with some iPhone users running iOS 14 beta
For the first time, Apple iPhone users will enjoy picture-in-picture (PiP) once iOS 14 is installed. This will allow users to watch videos while multitasking and using other apps. The iPad has had this feature going back to 2015's iOS 9. According to some Twitter users (via 9to5Mac), YouTube is beginning to rollout picture-in-picture to some iOS users via the latter's YouTube app.
Apple has added support for Google’s VP9 codec to the latest builds of its operating systems such as iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14. As a result, those latter OS builds can run 4K HDR videos in the YouTube app for the first time.
Apple recently dropped the iOS 14 public beta 6 as it gets closer to the release of the final version of iOS 14. Besides picture-in-picture support, iOS 14 includes Android-style widgets, the App Library, and more. The App Library divides all of your apps up into categories making them easier to find. You can also hide pages of apps so if you use the App Library as your major method of locating and opening apps on your iPhone, you can eliminate other pages full of app icons that you no longer need. Apps can also be searched for by their name.
Check out how PiP looks on an iPad running the YouTube app on iPadOS below:
Picture in Picture working on iPadOS with the YouTube app.
— Daniel Yount (@dyountmusic) August 27, 2020
(But only worked with this live stream, there must be some codec trickery happening behind the scenes for certain playback scenarios). pic.twitter.com/75vG7Ai4ln