With iOS 9 being out for nearly five months now, you would’ve expected all the top video apps to already be including picture-in-picture for the iPad. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case with YouTube and a few others. If you’re feeling the hurt from not being able to catch up on your favorite YouTuber’s latest videos while multitasking around your iPad, then check out CornerTube, a new YouTube utility app focused on PIP. CornerTube lets users quickly jump into videos on YouTube, all the while enabling that missing PIP feature. It gets even better once you start utilizing the included Today widget in Notification Center and Action extension in other apps.
With no word in sight on when it will be enabled in the official app, multiple others have offered up their own solutions on a YouTube and PIP feature. CornerTube’s lightweight app has taken that a step further, all the while looking to make the video watching experience faster. The app focuses on getting the user into watching the video they want, without trying to be a full-blown YouTube replacement app. The Today Widget captures any copied YouTube link from the clipboard and places it into your Notification Center, and the Action extension allows you to launch directly into a video from a YouTube link. These are really great when browsing through your Twitter feed when you want to hop right into watching the latest discovered video without leaving the app you’re already using.
The app itself is extremely clean with a focused simplicity on search and finding the content you want immediately. Type in a search term, and you’re presented with a thumbnail grid of all the results. This quickly removes some of the annoyances I have whenever I launch YouTube to watch a single video. I don’t need to see all the recommended channels or videos load before my desired video loads.
CornerTube’s Today widget is a nice addition for those times that I want to watch a video soon, but not far enough out that I would try to add it to my ‘Watch Later’ playlist. The most recent copied YouTube link gets placed into the Today Widget, where you can tap and launch directly into watching it. I really see myself using this whenever I find that latest movie trailer, but can’t quite pull myself away just this second. It also lets you quickly jump between YouTube’s app and CornerTube’s app with PIP ready to go.
CornerTube also includes a really nice Action extension. Personally, I feel this is the most powerful part of the app. Being able to launch directly into a YouTube video using this Action extension is perfect when skimming through Tweetbot. Just tap and hold on a link and launch directly into CornerTube using the ‘Send To CornerTube’ option. The result is the ability to view the YouTube video with picture-in-picture, while going right back to browsing Tweetbot in this example.
CornerTube is available on iOS 9 for iPad via the App Store for $1.99. Picture-in-Picture is available on the iPad Air, iPad Air 2, iPad Pro, and iPad mini 2 or later models. Give CornerTube a try and let us know what you think about the utility, and why you think YouTube is taking its time to support this feature.
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Always hated the Google YouTube app. Will be trying this out later today.
How do you get the small calendar besides the date in the today view? I have an iPad Air 2.
Based on my experience it’s limited to iPad pro on iOS 9. I have both devices same software. Only appears on the pro
YouTube Red offers PIP, so the YouTube app supports it; you just have to pay $120/year for the feature. Not cool.
I’m kind of surprised that Apple lets this stand… I’ve never heard of a developer charging for the integration of basic, expected, OS-level functionality.
YouTube Red is far more than a PIP feature. I’m sure you knew that. And yes … it would be nice if PIP was available for all YouTube users, not just YouTube Red. (I enjoy having YouTube Red as part of my Google Music subscription, though.)
i gave googles YT app a 2 star rating because of not implementing the PIP. i dont get it – why dont they update their app?!
It’s always a little sad when I launch the App Store and see that YouTube is under the updates list, but yet again it’s just “Bug fixes and stability improvements”.
Quick! Grab it, because it will be terminated by Google!
Or more like terminated by Apple. You can always count on Apple to stifle great app development because it violates their ying yang.
Because YouTube should be using PIP. They’re not doing it because they don’t want you to leave the app.
I believe Apple and Google’s rivalry is intensifying, so Apple might keep it in the Store just for spite. Heh.
If it doesn’t violate rules, they won’t take out.
Why doesn’t Apple bring PIP to iPhone? The YouTube app has an in app PIP where you can minimize the video when you want to keep searching for content and it looks great. Alas, Apple would rather just keep it as an iPad feature and use it as a selling point. With an iPhone with large screen the need for an iPad for me is even less than ever. I submitted a feature request.
I wish we had an alternate youtube app on Apple TV 4th Gen… There are none for some reason.
Simple trick. Uninstall Youtube app if you have one. Open Youtube in Safari, switch to desktop version (from three points control on top). Here you are. You have a PIP control on Youtube video.