Once again, Whatsapp comes to us with a new feature rolled into the latest update. The past couple of weeks had this application adding the notification inline photo support which is native to the Android Pie. Then, the swipe to reply action from iOS was borrowed by Android. Just recently, Whatsapp adds yet another feature to Android, a feature which was enjoyed by plenty of iOS users for months. Naturally, we are talking about the picture-in-picture playback for videos.
If you managed to upgrade to the latest version of Whatsapp (Beta v2.18.301), then you probably noticed by now how the videos coming from Facebook, Youtube or Instagram come with a different appearance in the preview box. If you tap the play button, then the video expands and moves to the top of the chat while it starts playing.
Now you can freely move the video around, tap to reveal its play or pause button and you can choose between shutting it off completely and opening the respective app to view it there. Besides, your whole Wapp convo remains completely active underneath the video, allowing you to continue your typing and read your friend’s replies as you scroll normally.
These new features require the sender of the video to wait for a moment so that the preview can load properly after he or she typed the link for the video. Those who are impatient will get nothing more other than the link. Picture-in-picture (or PiP for short) seems to work for now on either of the big three, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube.
Unfortunately, the videos from Twitter or those shared from inside the application don’t seem to follow this trend, which can cause some frustration for users.
Agnes is a technical writer, being in touch with reports to come up with the latest tech leaks.
