The long-awaited picture-in-picture feature for video playback is proving to be one of the most popular on the iOS 14 operating system, with users now being able to let videos run in the background or appear above other apps. Unfortunately, YouTube, the most popular video platform in the world, does not allow this directly from the application, and it was necessary to select the desktop version from the site. However, it seems that Google has “fixed” the problem, and now the function is again available for iPhone users.
YouTube now works in picture-in-picture mode without special settings
Initially, as long as iOS 14 was in beta, picture-in-picture playback on YouTube worked smoothly. Just turn on the clip you wanted to see or listen to, move it to fullscreen and then press the dedicated button in the interface. Thus, the clip remained above all iOS applications and interface and you could continue to do other things with your phone.
After the launch of the final version, Google limited this feature to the mobile version, being available only to those who were authenticated on YouTube with an active Premium subscription. Since there is no such limitation on the iPadOS 14, users quickly discovered that if they requested the desktop version of YouTube through the Safari browser, they could still use picture-in-picture.
But now, Google seems to have given in and allows everyone to run YouTube this way, or even in the background or with the screen off, without a premium subscription. All you have to do is access YouTube from your Safari browser, or even from other iOS browsers like Chrome or Firefox. In fact, the differences between them exist only at the interface level, as they are all based on WebKit, the only browser engine allowed by Apple on its mobile platform.
