YouTube announced yesterday that it has started rolling out Picture-in-Picture support to more iPhone and iPad users. The feature lets users continue to watch YouTube videos in a small mini player when using other apps on their iPhones or iPads.

Picture-in-Picture support has been available on Android for years, but on iOS it has been available as an experimental feature for YouTube Premium subscribers. Unfortunately, the public rollout of this feature on iOS devices will come with some asterisks.

For YouTube Premium subscribers, Picture-in-Picture will be available globally for both music and non-music content. For non-Premium members, Picture-in-Picture will only roll out to iPhone and iPad users in the US, though only for non-music content.

Picture-in-Picture will only be available on devices running iOS 15 and iPad OS 15 or higher. The feature needs to be enabled manually in Settings, otherwise, YouTube videos will just keep playing in the background (background play remains a core YouTube Premium feature).

“We recognize this has been a slow roll out for a highly requested feature, and want to thank everyone who shared feedback during experiments, and waited patiently for this moment,” the YouTube team said yesterday. Picture-in-Picture should roll out to more iOS users “over the next several days,” so make sure to check the app’s settings if you want to turn on the feature once it becomes available.

Tagged with iOS, iPad, iPhone, Picture in Picture, YouTube