- YouTube picture-in-picture on mobile is broken for some
- The feature was made available to all users earlier this year
- Google says it’s looking into the issue and working on a fix
YouTube picture-in-picture (PiP) mode on Android and iOS is one of the most useful features the app offers — available to all users now, Premium or otherwise — but a widespread bug seems to have broken the functionality on phones.
As reported by 9to5Google, there are multiple reports of PiP mode failing to activate when the YouTube app is exited. The audio keeps playing in the background, but there’s no sign of the small video overlay.
We’ve had mixed experiences with this on the TechRadar team: for some it’s working fine, for others it’s broken. However, it’s definitely a genuine problem for some users at least, because Google has acknowledged there is a bug.
“Our teams are actively investigating the issue, and we’ll update this thread as soon as we have more information,” explains a Google representative, saying that while most bug reports are coming from iPhone owners, the issue is also appearing on Android.
What happens next?
We’ve scoured the YouTube Help forums and Reddit, and so far there doesn’t seem to be any proper workaround for the problem. If it’s something you’re experiencing, you’re just going to have to wait it out until Google issues a fix.
According to the Reddit threads that have popped up discussing the bug, it’s affecting both free users and those paying for Premium, so you’re not going to be able to bring back PiP by giving the paid subscription a go.
One poster reports that the feature has been “acting up for several weeks” and that PiP sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. If that’s the case it might be worth rebooting your phone and trying again — though there’s no guarantees.
The best place to look for updates on PiP functionality is the official thread for the issue on the YouTube Help forum. Hopefully, with Google’s engineers on the case, it’s a bug that gets sorted out sooner rather than later.
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