Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
In summary
- YouTube's in-app messaging player was introduced in October 2022.
- The latest beta version of Google Messages reflects the removal of the YouTube PiP player.
Google giveth, and Google taketh. In 2022, Google had a major overhaul of its To inform app, introduced the icon we still use today and gave it a bunch of new features, including the ability to respond to specific messages and improved support for SMS emoji reactions. Unfortunately, not all apps have stood the test of time, and it looks like Google is cutting support for the app for YouTube picture-in-picture (PiP) play.
A APK disassembly helps predict features that might appear on a service in the future based on code that is still under development. However, such predicted features may not make it into a public release.
The idea behind introducing this feature in the first place was logical: send a YouTube link to a friend, and they’ll see a preview of the video with a thumbnail. Tap that, and Messages will open a floating PiP playback window, making it easy to watch a clip without being pulled completely out of your conversation.
To be honest, we’re not sure we remember using this, but when we looked around in the latest beta version of Google Messages, we noticed that all of the code and text strings that previously enabled the feature suddenly disappeared. Even in the latest stable version of the app, we can’t get the YouTube player to work right now, and the thumbnails are broken. That suggests to us that this change has been a long time coming, and what we’re seeing is Google doing some housekeeping.
A cynical mind might suggest that putting a YouTube player like this inside other apps simply gave users one less reason to pay for YouTube Premium, with its ubiquitous PiP window. Did you ever take advantage of this playback option back when it was available? Let us know in the comments.