WhatsApp has had the picture-in-picture feature built-in to the app since 2018, and it lets users play YouTube and Facebook videos in a popped-out view to make watching easier and more comfortable.  The feature makes conversations smoother as it lets users watch videos without leaving the conversation.

According to WABetainfo (via XDA-Developers), WhatsApp is testing a redesigned picture-in-picture mode that adds control bars to the floating video player. The control bar shows up on the bottom of the video, and it shows a play/pause button, a full-screen, and a close button. These buttons showed up in the center of the video previously, which didn’t provide a comfortable user experience as it meant that part of the content had to be covered up with your finger, and it was in the way of displaying media.

Whatsapp new picture in picture design

Android itself had a similar picture-in-picture built-in, although it was limited and not many applications took advantage of the functionality, and it was also briefly limited to YouTube Premium subscribers. Twitch has also implemented it, although many other third-party apps still lack the functionality.

The new picture-in-picture feature is available in the latest WhatsApp beta update, and the XDA author was able to get the feature enabled using the WhatsApp beta version 2.21.22.3. The new feature isn’t currently available in public, stable version of WhatsApp, and you’ll need to use the Beta software in order to take advantage of the redesigned feature.

WhatsApp is hard at work, and the company is currently working on several new features such as end-to-end encrypted backups, offering cloud backups across different platforms and services,  and more. We have also shared our thoughts on the latest and longest Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp outage, in case you want to read more about our thoughts and opinion on the matter.