Android Oreo brought picture-in-picture mode to the OS and while it enabled users to have uninterrupted video playing even when they switched apps, this feature wasn’t supported by YouTube, even though it made perfect sense for YouTube to support PiP from day one. That’s because this was initially limited to those who were paying for the YouTube Premium service but now it appears that Google is enabling non-premium users in the United States to access this feature as well.
Reports have now started coming in that any and all YouTube users in the United States can now take advantage of the picture-in-picture mode. This means that they can switch over to another app from YouTube and still have the video playing in the floating box.
There is a caveat, though. This feature won’t work with all videos because channels and content creators have the option to enable and disable PiP for their videos. If you find that this feature isn’t working for you straight away, try testing it with videos from different creators.
YouTube users in the United States will now find the picture-in-picture mode toggle in the app’s Settings menu. It remains to be seen how soon this feature will be rolled out in other markets for non-premium users.