How iOS 14 Picture-in-Picture Will Work on Your iPhone (And One Important Thing It Can’t Do)

This story is part of WWDC 2020. All the latest coverage from Apple’s annual WWDC developer conference.

From Apple iOS 14 update for iPhone ($ 699 at Amazon) has received criticism for its introduction of “new” functions that Android already has. That’s certainly the case with Picture in Picture, a video feature that we first saw on Samsung phones before we hit Google’s broader Android operating system. And the feature isn’t new to Apple either, it already exists on the iPad, but its iPhone debut is still significant to the hundreds of millions of iPhone users around the world.

Also, Apple’s version of the video feature has a few additional tricks that Google might want to emulate. Picture in Picture and other iPhone features came to the IOS 14 public beta in July and will be released to everyone else later this fall.

This is what Picture in Picture is, how it works, how it could overcome PiP on Android phones, and also its limitations. (And here we show you how to know if iOS 14 will work with your iPhone.)

read more: Radical changes to the iPhone home screen are not enabled by default. What you need to know

What is Picture in Picture video for iOS 14?

Picture-in-picture lets you view a thumbnail-sized video in the corner of your screen while doing other things on your phone. The video stays as you open a chat window, scroll through a story in your browser, or adjust display settings. So you can watch a video on iPhone from any screen.

Picture-in-Picture is Apple’s proper name for this feature, but it’s generally known in mobile circles as Picture-in-Picture or PiP.

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IPhone apps that will support Picture in Picture on iOS 14

Application developers who want to take advantage of PiP will need to use Apple’s Picture in Picture APIs.

How Picture in Picture works on iPhone

Regardless of which phone you use it on, picture-in-picture is a very convenient feature. You don’t go out of your way to use it. Comes to youAnd in a way that should be completely natural and useful.

This is what happens on the iPhone. You start watching a video in a compatible application. It occurs to you that you need to reply to a text message, check your email, or check the weather. As you swipe up to go Home, your video shrinks and continues to roll in a thumbnail view. This also works with FaceTime calls.

The thumbnail is persistent, which means you can switch to whatever app you want for as long as you want without the video disappearing. To enlarge the video window, pinch to zoom. To move it, just drag it with your fingertip.

If the PiP window gets in the way, you can slide it over to the side where it docks and it almost disappears, leaving you with a tab to pull when you want to reopen it. Here’s the best part: the audio continues to play even if you flatten the video thumbnail.

While in Picture-in-Picture mode, you can pause, rewind, or fast-forward in applications that support those controls. And you can touch a control to go full screen or close the video entirely, say if you’re done with a FaceTime call.

What Google and Samsung can learn from Apple

Apple’s Picture in Picture feature could have an advantage over Android PiP in two ways. I felt my eyes light up when Apple demonstrated the docking feature in iOS 14. On Android phones, you can drag a PiP window anywhere on the screen you want. But if you move it to the sidelines, it will crash like a bowling ball at a child’s birthday party.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve closed a PiP window in exasperation because I was always on the go. But you don’t always want to stop the video. The option to keep the audio playing after flattening the video sounds extremely useful for FaceTime calls, so you can make full use of your screen temporarily while talking to the other person.

For example, you may need to carefully follow the walking directions, but you still want them to be able to see your face on video.

Pinch-to-zoom is the other potential highlighted with Apple’s Picture-in-Picture tool. It does not exist for Android. On phones like Samsung Galaxy S20 and OnePlus 8 Pro ($ 999 at OnePlus), I was able to zoom in to make it a little bigger, and a second zoom attempt opened it to full size. If Apple’s method gives you real scale (as it appears to do) and works as advertised, that might get other phone brands to pay attention.

What iPhone Picture-in-Picture Won’t Do

Apple’s new feature is announced to work with video only, compared to PiP on Android, which also works with Google Maps. As someone with an unfortunate sense of direction, keeping an eye on walking directions while doing whatever else I’m doing has been a lifesaver more times than I can count. Hopefully Apple will expand in the future to include Apple and Google Maps in the Picture-in-Picture arena.

Here it is what you need to know about iOS 14 and everything Apple announced at WWDC.