Unable to watch Netflix in a picture-in-picture mode on iPhone

tabathay2k wrote:

FYI It seems like the Netflix basic plan with advertisements does not allow for PIP.

I never thought of that. My plan is one of the upgraded plans.

Jayfork wrote:

Yeah I understand what you mean it just doesn’t work like that for me. It just brings up the menu with the volume/brightness etc on it. I tried calling Netflix and the tech support lady, didn’t understand the concept of Picture in Picture and then tried to convince me that it’s not possible with Netflix at all. So I honestly just dgaf anymore I cancelled my subscription anyway. But thanks for trying

If you’re getting the menu with the volume/brightness etc on it, that’s the Control Center. That you get from swiping from the top of the screen, not the bottom. What you need to do is open Netflix, start watching something, when you are watching it you swipe from the bottom like you are going to the Home Screen. This should automatically open up the window for you to watch it when your phone is searching for or opening other apps. Just swipe, don’t swipe to the middle and pause as this will bring up the switcher which doesn’t do what you are looking for. You need to take your phone to the Home Screen without stopping or pausing the video.

Please contact Netflix.

Currently, the Apple TV app has this feature for sure.

If your video player app (YouTube) doesn’t support PIP right now, then you may have to wait for the developer to update the app compatible with iOS 14 with PiP.

Alternatively, you may go to youtube.com in Safari, play a video, and make it full screen. Now you can select the newly-added PIP button on an iPhone running iOS 14, and the video will pop out from the page. You can change tabs or navigate to different apps, and the video will keep running in the PIP.

See the pic below, a snapshot was taken on iPhone SE 1st Gen iOS 14.0.1

I did contact Netflix and they told me it was a apple problem. So I’m not sure what to do about it. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I finally figured it out and it is totally unintuitive. There is no icon to tap on to do this.

When you are watching a video, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and the video will go into PIP mode.

I think it’s weird how Netflix knows whether or not you’re on vacation like you should be able to add an address. Also it’s not their business….

Jayfork wrote:

Nope just brings up the apple widget menu thing

I don’t know what you mean. I don’t see that at all. Not sure why it doesn’t work for you but it works for me. As I said, there is no icon to tap on to go to PIP.

ZintainUSA wrote:

There are other apps that don’t do it and I have the basic plan with Ads and I can go into the PiP mode with no issues as I can with other apps as well.

Thanks for confirming that you can use PIP with a basic Netflix plan. As I stated, I have an upgraded plan so I couldn’t confirm that it doesn’t work with the basic plan.

Yeah they want you to basically pay an additional 7.99 for you to be able to log in with your families account. It’s B.S and scummy. And at thar point you might as well just get your own account. My brother is in college and he has to do same as you with me cause I am the account holder. We get it also through tmobile and honestly if it wasn’t for it being a free service thru the phone company I would probably cancel my subscription. I don’t want to support the scummy tactics they are pulling with their new policies. I mean for 1, a college student (or their parents/family) shouldn’t have to pay an additional fee so they can watch netflix while at school. And 2, they shouldn’t block certain features like picture in picture or whatever its called behind a pay wall. Hbo, hulu, peacock and prime all have ads and you can still do picture in picture mode. I use to play a game on my phone while watching a show before bed and then they changed their subscription packages and of course tmobile moved to lowest tier (at least they could give us the no ads version) and now i either got to choose do i watch a show before bed or play my game for a bit.

How do you get PIP to work with basic plan for Netflix? Netflix said I had to upgrade

Me too. I have tried to downgrade from Basic to Mobile, just to see what happens. I also have a Samsung phone. PiP works on my Android, but not on my iPad.

Hey I can actually help you here. The app on your tv just needs to be updated

Really fkng annoying.