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Picture-in-picture mode is already very famous in the world of Android. Users had access to this feature for ages. It is a handy feature that lets you play video in a mini floating window. This allows the users to perform other tasks while not missing out on watching their videos. Google TV didn’t have the picture-in-picture feature, but now Google is finally bringing this feature to the platform. However, there’s a big catch, so don’t get too excited just yet.
Google TV will finally get picture-in-picture mode
Google TV is nothing but a platform based on AOSP and is designed for modern-day televisions. The firm has another OS for TVs as well. It is termed as “Android TV” so don’t get confused between the two. The latest version of Google TV is based on Android 14. It misses out on the PiP mode feature for most of its TVs. However, some of the TVs manufactured by Sony and Nvidia have it. Smart TVs usually don’t have very strong hardware which makes it harder to run the PiP module.
Well, Google has made an official announcement that it is adding the support of picture-in-picture mode to the Google TV platform. But, there’s a huge catch.
PiP mode won’t be available to all the Smart TVs
The official announcement confirms that picture-in-picture mode will be only available on selected models. Not every TV running on Google TV will be eligible for the support of PiP mode. The search giant hasn’t clearly stated the criteria for identifying eligible TVs, but it’s mostly going to be powerful hardware.
Furthermore, not all the apps will be able to use PiP mode. Google has classified the eligible apps into four categories; communication, smart home, health, and ticker. Apps in this group can use PiP mode, but other apps such as Netflix and YouTube cannot. Google has also imposed a lot of restrictions on developers who can enable the feature. The developers will first have to declare the category of the apps and then Google will manually verify it.