Hulu has fully reenabled picture-in-picture support (PiP) on iOS, MacRumors reports, which means half-watching network TV is once again possible for Hulu subscribers on iPhone and iPad devices. Hulu joins a collection of major streaming services that support the feature on iOS, leaving YouTube as the major exception.
PiP for iPhones was enabled for Hulu around iOS 14’s original release, but it was later disabled to “work on a few updates to provide the best experience for our viewers,” Hulu said. Now that the feature is back, users can enable PiP mode by starting a show or movie and touching the PiP button to pop the video into a resizable, floating player.
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Hulu joins services like Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and HBO Max in supporting PiP. All of those services now either feature a dedicated PiP button like Hulu or default to picture-in-picture if you swipe to the home screen while a video is playing.
YouTube remains the odd one out. Picture-in-picture is not allowed in Google’s official YouTube app for iOS. Paying for YouTube Premium enables background play, but that only extends to audio on iOS. Google has also periodically disabled and reenabled PiP support for the web version of YouTube on iOS. As of October 2020, PiP was possible again, though it doesn’t appear to work as of today. Right now, only iPhones running the iOS 14.5 beta can do PiP on the web version of YouTube, according to MacRumors.
If you’re curious how to get PiP set up on your own device, check out The Verge’s guide.
