If you are an Android smartphone user and have Youtube Premium, then you must know about the feature where you can minimize the Youtube video to a small window on the edge of the screen while working on a different app. The feature is very dedicated to Youtube Premium users on Android. However, it seems that the users on iOS devices are using it for free. This feature in iOS is called the PiP mode, which has been made accessible for Apple device users by Apple. After the upgrade to iOS 14, the native Picture in Picture abilities to videos on the iPhone was made available for free.
In apps, this needs to be actively supported by developers, but for web video users simply needed to press the PiP button. The feature was available to iPhone users for a short period as Google later blocked the feature. However, the feature still continues to work on the iPad and on embedded Youtube videos. Now if Apple wants, they can continue to support the feature on their devices and it will not be blocked by Google as it is an Apple iOS feature.
However, since Youtube on App Store uses Apple’s payment platform for Youtube Premium subscription, it would not be great for them to continue to support this feature for free in the future. So we can expect that the feature will be completely removed very soon. Apple users can still use the PiP feature on their iPad and embedded Youtube videos unless it is permanently blocked by Apple.