YouTube PiP bug hits iPhone and Android users

YouTube’s picture-in-picture mode on mobile appears to be broken for some users on both iOS and Android, with Google saying it is “actively investigating” the problem.

According to 9to5Google, multiple users have reported that PiP no longer launches when they leave the YouTube app. In affected cases, the video audio continues playing in the background, but the floating mini-player never appears.

The bug matters because YouTube made picture-in-picture available to all users earlier this year, not just Premium subscribers. Reports suggest the issue is hitting both free and paid accounts, so subscribing does not restore the feature.

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Google has publicly acknowledged the problem in the YouTube Help forum.

“Our teams are actively investigating the issue, and we’ll update this thread as soon as we have more information.”

Most reports appear to be coming from iPhone owners, though Google said the bug is also showing up on Android devices.

Right now, there does not appear to be a reliable fix. TechRadar said its own team saw mixed results, with PiP working on some phones and failing on others. Reddit posts cited by the publication suggest the bug has been intermittent for at least several weeks, with one user saying the feature sometimes works and sometimes does not.

A reboot may be worth trying if PiP is only failing occasionally, but there is no confirmed workaround yet. For now, the main place to watch is the official issue thread on the YouTube Help forum, where Google says it will post updates.