On your iPhone, have you ever wished you could watch videos while you browsed the web, messaged a friend, or did something else? You can do this with the iPhone’s Picture-in-Picture mode. You can watch videos in picture-in-picture mode by dragging the player up from the bottom of your screen and sliding it into place while you navigate through your device’s menu and apps. Android smartphones have offered this feature for a long time, and the iPad has had picture-in-picture capabilities since iOS 9. Therefore, it is good to see that the feature is also available on iPhones, assuming they run iOS 14 or later. There is no need to worry; you are not the only one who does not know how Picture in Picture mode works on the iPhone.
How to Activate Picture-in-Picture Video on an iPhone
It’s pretty easy to work with Apple’s picture-in-picture mode. If you’ve ever used or owned an iPad, you’ll know how it works.
- Try watching a video within any app of your choice, or Safari is a good place to test. However, not all apps support picture-in-picture mode. In the playback controls, look for the pop-out icon. When the app minimizes, tap on it, and the video will float on the screen. The icon may appear if you exit the app while the video is being played.
- As you navigate through the screen, the video will continue to play in the floating window. The floating window can be resized by pinching out or pinching in using two fingers.
- You’ll see that the floating window gets stuck outside in the corner when you’re using the App Switcher, but the video will continue to play. Once you switch to a different application, the floating window will open automatically. Tapping the floating window will access playback controls.
- Depending on the app you’re using, you’ll now be able to pause, stop, rewind, or fast-forward the video from the floating window. The video will snap back into place within the respective app once you click the pop-in icon in the top-right corner of the floating window. Tap the “X” as shown here to stop video playback.
- It’s as simple as that. You’re now using picture-in-picture mode on your iPhone.
As a reminder, not all apps support the feature natively yet. Until quite recently, you couldn’t watch YouTube videos in a floating window on the YouTube app, but the latest version allows it. To work around this, you could (and still can) access YouTube within Safari, watch the video in fullscreen, and then go to the Playback menu in that application to access Picture-in-Picture.
You can even use picture-in-picture mode for FaceTime calls. Here is a video embedded below from Apple that may help you understand how picture-in-picture on an iPhone works: