Developer Adam Bell has demonstrated an interesting hack to Apple’s new Picture in Picture feature on iOS 9 for iPads. Picture in Picture is used to view video playback or FaceTime video calls within other apps or from the home screen so users can work with other apps without interrupting playback.
While the feature is currently limited to Apple’s video apps and videos played through Safari, a public API for developers is available to allow other video apps like YouTube to add support for Picture in Picture on iOS 9.
Bell has managed to hack the Picture in Picture mode using the public API to allow any app showing any type of content to be minimized and displayed over other apps including the home screen.
In his video, a demo from the game Doom is seen playing through Picture in Picture mode over the home screen. Bell says the process doesn’t require jailbreaking or process injection.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrC0c9BSXCw]
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I’m confused as to benefit of this…?
Picture in picture or any content?
I will say I love this feature and along with Split View makes the iPad much more useful.
how, exactly? Give me one use case that would be popular enough for this to make sense?
One use case? Try any and all use cases of video playback. Its not complicated.
But video playback is already provided by iOS 9. It’s use case for this hack to make sense I’m looking for. Geee…
Neither Netflix nor YouTube support it yet.
Im sure plenty of people would like to keep a netflix show running while texting in messages or something along those lines.
Which is how you’re proving my point. Netflix is a video player. Which presumably would be one of the first to adopt video-in-picture… I would assume that this will also work for video calls (Skype, FaceTime). Otherwise I don’t see how having window forcibly scaled to that size and without controls would be useful…
Notes app sitting on top of Safari to jot down a recipe…..I could think of 1000 things to do with this…..none of them earth shattering but plenty of things to be done.
That’s what split view is for.
You don’t have control over picture-in-picture window, beyond basic video buttons. Plus it’s tiny. IT’s also scaled from full screen. You wouldn’t be even able to read from inside of it.
One practical use I can think of: a how-to video explaining the steps required to adjust an iPad setting, for example – the split window may be obscuring a particular button, so moving the video window or resizing it would be better screen space management.
I can see developers and trainers going to town with this feature using scripts to move a how-to video around an iPad screen in the vicinity of particular buttons and screen elements that their video may be highlighting or discussing.
Showrooms and other commercial displays should also find a multitude of uses for this feature.
Ok I feel i need to clarify: I’m not saying I don’t see use for PIP. It’s going to make great place to play video. What I’m saying is I don’t see benefit from scaling any other app down to little window on the screen in the same manner. So I like what Apple did with PIP, I don’t see benefit from the hack this guys showed.
I agree. No benefit for PIP content other than video which is why Apple left it at that.
Stocks? Maps? Radio player app like iPlayer? Every person to their own apps – some might not see the benefit, but some will, with PiP providing an alternative view than side bar or split view
PIP is simply not useful for interactive content and doesn’t make sense for that. Apple makes these decisions not lightly. Too much options and people get confused and it kills simplicity. I am sure over time there may be more uses to PIP than just showing video (stocks, maps or widgets ..) for now only video makes the most sense, certainly not games. You don’t need a radio player in PIP as you can already play audio in the background and also access play controls quickly from many locations including control center by just sliding your finger up from the bottom bezel of the screen.
Radio player? Why would you need video window for radio player? Sure audio can already play in the background. Note that window is forcibly scaled, so any text would be way to small to read. Plus there’s no control over the window apart from previous/play/next buttons.
No benefit in playing doom.
Ssh client, dashboard of realtime site stats, bug list/ticket queue, etc etc
Netflix. Late adopters. Non adopters. What else? Netflix still hasn’t adopted pip almost a year since Api. Kind of annoying. I’d like to play poker and watch Netflix at same time lol.
How is this showing “any type of content”? At 0:10 you can see that the demo is just a video, therefore this is the intended use of picture in picture…
No, at 0:10 he’s bringing up a video (not Doom) and playing that overtop of the Doom demo. Then at 0:13 something happens (? that’s the part I’m confused about) and the video is replaced by doom. I’m not sure if he was just demoing PiP with the first video, or if the handoff is a necessary part of the hack…
I’m 100% positive that the flash of video is part of the hack.
This is amazing
Will be great for keeping one eye on my security cams or having slingplayer continuing in a window, will also allow for developers not adding native support or taking too long to add it. Can’t understand why people are debating this, it’s a no brainer.
The benefit is you will be able to use PIP with apps other than Safari. It works in Safari with iOS 9, but it doesn’t work within apps like youtube, etc. I think it’s a great feature, and am happy to see it works with my iPad Air 1.
‘Picture in Picture’ in Mac App Store better than Helium.