YouTube terminates PiP trial on iOS, but it still works

PiP will be made available for free to ad-supported customers in the United States.

YouTube began rolling out Picture-in-Picture to the iOS app officially in June, and the process has been quite slow. Although a workaround was provided for premium members, YouTube’s PiP test for iPhone and iPad has finally concluded.

After reaching its early April end date, the “Picture-in-Picture on iOS” experiment (from August) has been removed from youtube.com/new. On the desktop site and mobile apps, Google warned users with a “The function you’re attempting to use has been disabled” banner.

Having said that, the YouTube PiP continues to work for iPhone and iPad customers who previously enabled the test. It did not vanish from one of the iPads we use often for PiP, but it was enabled after installing the YouTube app on a new iPhone and entering into a Premium account.

However, premium customers who have never attempted the experiment do not have PiP today. Ten months later, YouTube has yet to broadly roll out the capacity.

A full launch is anticipated soon, as YouTube TV just expanded the availability of PiP for its iOS app. It was introduced in late March and is now completely available. It’s arguably far more necessary for the high-end cord-cutting device.

Picture is a perk (i.e. background play) available to all paid YouTube Premium subscribers worldwide. PiP will be made available for free to ad-supported customers in the United States. Music content is omitted due to the possibility of an upsell to YouTube’s dedicated streaming service.