Google’s killing off the Messages YouTube PiP player

Google giveth, and Google taketh away. Back in 2022, Google had prepared a major refresh to its Messages app, introducing the icon for it we still use today, and giving it a bunch of new features, including the ability to reply to specific messages, and improved SMS emoji reaction support. Unfortunately, not all of them have stood the test of time, and it looks like Google has just killed off the app’s support for YouTube picture-in-picture (PiP) playback.

The thinking behind introducing this feature in the first place made enough sense: text a friend a YouTube link, and they’d see a preview of the video with a thumbnail. Tap on that, and Messages would launch a floating PiP playback window so you could easily check out a clip without being fully pulled away from your conversation.

Honestly, we’re not sure we even remember ever using this one, but while poking around the latest Google Messages beta, we noticed that all the code and text strings that previously enabled the feature are suddenly missing. Even on the latest stable version of the app, we’re currently unable to get the YouTube player to operate, and thumbnails are broken. That suggests to us that this change has been a long time coming, and what we spotted is Google’s clean-up work.

A cynical mind might suggest that putting a YouTube player like this in other apps was just giving users one fewer reason to pay for YouTube Premium, with its PiP window that can go anywhere. Did you ever take advantage of this playback option while you could? Let us know in the comments.