YouTube picture-in-picture could expand to non-subscribers outside the US

One of the features of YouTube is picture-in-picture mode. This allows users to minimize the YouTube app on their phone, but still keep the video playing in a small floating window on their screen. If you stay in the US, the feature is actually free to use, but if you live outside the US, then you have to pay for YouTube Premium to access it.

That could change in the future. According to multiple threads on Reddit, it appears that YouTube could be rolling out picture-in-picture mode for users outside the US who are also non-subscribers. The reports of users seeing this feature seem to largely come from Europe. This means that YouTube could simply be testing the feature out for now.

Android Police notes that the YouTube support page for picture-in-picture still states that users outside the US will have to subscribe to Premium to access it. It is possible that this could be a bug that accidentally unlocked access for non-US users, but like we said, it could also be a test.

Hopefully it is the latter. Paying for YouTube Premium just to access this feature does seem a bit excessive and unnecessary for some. There are other perks and features of Premium, like saving videos for offline watching, watching videos without ads, and also access YouTube Music.