James Delahunty
28 Jun 2018 6:15
According to reports, non-premium YouTube users are getting the picture-in-picture feature on their Android devices.
The PiP feature will keep a small window showing the YouTube video playing even as users navigate across other apps on their Android smartphone or tablet. It was introduced last November but was only available for users paying for premium service on YouTube - YouTube Red and YouTube Premium - but now seems to be appearing for free users too.
So far the feature only seems to be rolling out to users located in the United States. Since the uploader of a video can exclude its user with PiP mode, most major music videos don't work with the feature.
The rollout also seems to be limited only to those running Android Oreo 8.0+. To check if it is available for you, check to see if the option has become available in the YouTube settings as a toggle-on-toggle-off button. Once switched on, simply use the Home button when playing videos to minimize the video to small rectangle and navigate through other apps as you normally would.
Source: XDA-Developers