How to Use Picture in Picture on iPhone Duo

With the larger screen on the inside of the iPhone Duo, we get some really good ways of multitasking and working together. One of them is to watch videos whilst you’re working, whether that’s on YouTube, a streaming app or whatever it is you’re using. I’m going to show you two different ways of doing this: the traditional Picture in Picture mode, and then a new special mode that only works on the Duo, which is great when you’re using the phone in a portrait orientation.

Before we get started, though, if you’re new around here, then hi, I’m Jacob. I’m your friendly Apple expert here on YouTube to help you make the most of all of your Apple devices. If you want more friendly and simple QuickTips like this, please do press subscribe down below.

So, I’m going to use the YouTube app for this demo, and I’ve just stumbled across this video of this handsome-looking chap talking to camera, so we’ll play that one as the example. If I swipe away from YouTube, it’s going to carry on playing in Picture in Picture mode. What’s nice here is I can then move that little window around my screen, and I can even pinch to make it bigger or smaller.

This means I can carry on working in Notes, and the video keeps on playing. I can still hear it, and I can still see it. I can also go back to full-screen YouTube if I want to, or I can close the video at this point.

But where it really becomes interesting is when you turn the phone to a portrait orientation. Picture in Picture mode will carry on working just like it did before. I can drag the little bubble around, it will kind of glue itself to each of the four corners, and I can make it a bit bigger or a bit smaller.

But when the phone is in portrait, there’s a new icon at the top of the Picture in Picture window here, and if I press on that, it’s going to make the video fill the whole top of my screen, and the other app will continue underneath. This is a really interesting mode that only works on the Duo, and it only works on streaming videos in portrait. There are a lot of things that you have to get right for this to work, but when it does, it means you can carry on using your phone.

You can even leave the app and go to another app, and that video is going to stay playing the whole time. A word of warning, though: if you do leave the app and go to another app, you have to press that button again on the Picture in Picture window to make it fill the top of the screen. But this is a really effective way to multitask on the phone, and I find myself quite often watching YouTube videos whilst I’m doing work on the lower two-thirds of my screen. And, of course, we can press the X in the corner to close it completely, and then we’re back to using our phone as normal.

And if you found this tip useful, I think you’re probably going to really enjoy this one next.