How to use YouTube picture-in-picture (PiP) on iPhone

With iOS 14 last year, Apple finally brought the long-awaited ability to use a PiP (or picture-in-picture) player on iPhones—something that had already been available on iPads for a year already. It was originally rolled out only for Apple's own native player apps, such as Apple TV, and a few other supported players, but YouTube wasn't one of them. 

It wasn't until two months ago that Google finally began rolling out support for YouTube picture-in-picture viewing on iPhone's iOS. And even though it still hasn't been released to the wider public, subscribers to YouTube Premium already have the ability to test out the PiP feature (in its experimental phase) on their iPhones. 

If you happen to be subscribed to YouTube Premium, you should also be able to test picture-in-picture YouTube watching. If that's the case, here's how you can turn on this feature and try it out right now, as it's something you're likely to end up using on the daily once it's polished up, as you multitask with other apps on your iPhone.

For a limited time, YouTube Premium subscribers are all being given the opportunity to be the first to try out experimental new features, and YouTube PiP for iPhone is one of them. Subscribers will be able to try it out for a limited time, only until October 31st. (To see what other experimental features there are on offer for trial testing, you can check out Youtube.com/new.)

When you've done that, find a video you want to watch, play it, and then either swipe up on it or press home. This will close the app and open up a mini player on your screen, which you can watch while using other apps at the same time. The mini player will keep the standard touch controls for play/pause and rewinding backward or forward. 

You can expand or minimize the player using pinching finger gestures, while a small button in the corner of the PiP player can take you back to the YouTube app at any time.

Locking your screen will automatically pause any video you have running on a picture-in-picture player, although you can always resume it right away from the media controls that show up on the lock screen. 

This YouTube Premium PiP experimental feature is currently only available for iPhone users to try out, and the perk doesn't extend to iPads. Although only Premium users can use try it out at the moment, it's possible that once the PiP player is perfected, it's going to be freely available to all YouTube users.