A recent update to the Plex app for iOS has totally killed Picture In Picture (PIP).
I’ve tried it on all my devices, I have deleted and reinstalled the app, I have toggled PIP off then on, I actually just received a brand new iPad Pro, set it up as brand new, downloaded & install Plex for iOS; in none of these situations does PIP work.
When I swipe up to go to the iPad home screen, it quits the app instead of switching to picture in picture.
I actually use this feature a lot so that I don’t have to constantly start / stop a movie while I’m doing other things.
Now it is super annoying that anytime I want to do anything else on my iPad I have to re-launch the app & re-start / hit play again.
Is anyone else having this issue and when can we expect a fix?
Bumping this thread for the holiday weekend…bueller?
As I said in my OP: Even on a literally brand new, out of the box iPad, setup as new / NOT restored from a backup, with a clean install of the Plex app; even THEN PIP didn’t work…
This is very clearly a bug with the app.
Please help!
Have you tried clicking the PIP icon in the top-right corner of the Plex player?
According to the related support article of Apple, the gesture you’re referring here can be used to watch multiple apps in Split View – different things (and not necessarily ideal for video playback in the background.
Oh dang…thanks!! I didnt realize that was even there. I really hate this new design language everyone’s shifted to where there are just a bunch of symbols on the screen, no text, and nothing looks like a button. Like we’re expected to randomly tap everything on the screen hoping something happens…
Anyway, that did the trick, but…it’s still not automatic.
It used to be that when I was watching a movie full screen, I could swipe up to go home and the movie would automatically continue playing PIP.
Another issue when tapping the PIP button is the movie pauses for a few seconds while it “thinks” about moving to Picture In Picture mode.
Never used to do that before…
Lame!!
Plex Support; Please let’s get a fix going for this.
Same issue. Going into PiP was seemless in earlier versions, before the “Enhanced Video Player” introduced in version 6.11.
Now it takes seconds after pressing a small icon. Playback also crashes when tapping button multiple times.
Playback also restarts when going back into Plex.
You can get the old player and old PiP behavior back by enabling the old video player in advanced settings.
Picture in Picture is only supported using Apple’s native player, AV Player. Our enhanced player, based on mpv, is much, much, much more capable than AV Player, however, due to limitations in how PiP works, mpv cannot be used for PiP. So when you click the PiP button, we now swap to AVPlayer. This can result in video or audio needing to be transcoded, which is why it takes a second or two as it decides what needs to happen and any transcodes required start. After going full screen again, we switch back to mpv. While you can get the old behaviour back by disabling the enhanced player, you’re also trading off many playback capabilities that AV Player doesn’t have.
I just wanted to say thank you for this explanation. I’m a casual user of Plex and this really helped me to understand why the PIP player is now pausing before it is implemented.
It’s much easier to overlook the pausing when I know what is actually happening in the background.
Not to be a smart aleck, but the “old” player plays movies just fine; what are some of the basic & fundamental differences for what makes the new player so superior?
What “capabilities” does it have?
As long as I can watch my movies, what’s the difference?
Honestly for my use case, I’m perfectly happy leaving it on “old” because I use PIP so much…
Thanks!!
Basically, wider direct play support for more video, audio, and subtitle codecs, and tone mapping for HDR content on SDR displays. You can read more from the initial announcement here:
The PinP button doesn’t work at all on iPad Pro with the recent updates. Frustrating. Was glitching for a long time. Then for a short while, it worked flawlessly. Now, updates have disabled it and now it doesn’t work at all. Why can’t plex simply stick with what works???
