Picture in picture was one of the hottest features of Android 8.0 Oreo and, even today, it is still one of the biggest additions to Android in recent times. If you are not familiar with it, it allows you to continue watching videos that are playing in your browser or other applications while doing something else. Since then, it has become a key feature for apps like YouTube, which allows you to continue watching videos while using other apps. But since its launch in 2017, it hasn’t really received any new refinements or improvements, but that could change now that Android 12 is coming.
Here he is in action. Feat. @ Dave2D pic.twitter.com/Im6u0QOFdt
– Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) February 18, 2021
Our deep dive into the first Developer Preview on Android 12 revealed that Google added extra functionality to the picture-in-picture feature on Android 12, with two new improvements. The first is to pinch to resize, which is basically what it looks like: with two fingers, you can change the size of the window, making it bigger or smaller if necessary. The second is to hide, which allows you to hide a window without closing it completely, putting it aside. Neither of these features is enabled by default, which is not really a surprise, as both features are very difficult at the moment.
There are many scenarios in which you may want to use these two features, so it is definitely useful that Google is adding them to Android 12. For example, you may be watching something and need to increase the video feed to see something closer, or perhaps you’re listening to the audio of a video, but the floating window is bothering what you’re doing in another application, so you just hide it.
At the moment, however, it is quite unpleasant, but that was to be expected, as we are using a very early version of this operating system. As soon as Android 12 starts to mature in the coming months, we should be able to see it working better and smoother, or it will be dropped altogether.