Picture-in-picture mode is finally coming to Google TV, but there’s a catch

Most smartphone screens aren’t large enough to comfortably display two full apps side by side, which can be a problem when you’re trying to get some work done while watching an educational video or live broadcast. This is where picture-in-picture (PiP) mode comes in handy. The PiP feature was introduced in Android 8.0 and allows you to watch videos in a small window layered on top of other apps. Although the PiP feature has been part of the Android platform for almost seven years, it is not supported on some versions of Android, most notably Google TV. However, this will change with the upcoming Android 14 update for TVs.

If you don’t know, Google TV is based on the Android TV operating system, which is the TV version of AOSP. Since the Android TV operating system is based on AOSP, it has many of the same features. However, some basic Android features have been removed from Android TV or rather do not need to be included. Picture in Picture is one example of an Android feature that is not required to be enabled on Android TV devices. While several Android TV devices such as NVIDIA Shield TV Pro 2019 and Sony X900H 2020 support PiP, many top Android TV devices do not.

Android TV devices tend to have low RAM, which is a problem for multitasking features like PiP. As a result, Android TV developers usually just disable the PiP feature in their software versions because it may not work well. While the decision to enable PiP on Android TV devices rests with OEMs, they don’t even have the option to enable the feature on Google TV devices. This is because, according to Google, PiP support “was not supported at all on Google TV prior to Android 13.” However, with the upcoming Android 14 update for TVs, Google TV devices will finally support picture-in-picture mode, although there are a few caveats.

The first caveat is that PiP mode may not be available on every Google TV device running Android 14 for TVs. This is for the same reason this feature isn’t widely available on Android TV devices: storage. Google says PiP is enabled “on select devices that meet (their) hardware compatibility criteria,” although it didn’t specify what those criteria are. Android TV app developers will need to check the package manager flag to see if PiP support is enabled on a specific device.

The second caveat is that Google doesn’t allow multimedia content to be displayed in a picture-in-picture window, which is a major departure from how the feature is used on mobile devices. This means you won’t be able to open a YouTube video while browsing for another video to play, for example. So what will you be able to do with PiP on Google TV? Here are the four categories of content that Google will approve for display on your TV in picture-in-picture mode:

1. Communication use cases such as video or voice calling.
2. Smart home integrations such as connected doorbells or baby monitors.
3. Health use cases such as fitness tracking or health monitoring.
4. Stock use cases such as live sports scores or news and stock quotes.

Android TV apps must explicitly declare categories corresponding to the intended use of PiP mode. This declaration should be added to your application’s manifest files so that Google can easily inspect them.

While it’s a bit of a bummer that Google limits what apps can use PiP on Android TV, it makes some sense. Google wants PiP actions to enhance or complement other full-screen actions. Apps that want to support PiP on Android TV need to follow some basic TV app quality guidelines, many of which make sense. The guidelines include restrictions on applications not being able to display promotional materials or advertisements using PiP windows, using excessive resources or hijacking focus in PiP mode, and not being able to automatically switch to PiP mode without explicit user action, including:

Due to the inconsistent availability of PiP on Android TV, many apps made for the platform don’t even bother to support this mode. With the introduction of PiP as an officially supported feature of the Android TV platform, we hope that more apps will add support for it. If Google hadn’t decided to skip Android 13 for TVs last year, we could have had the feature a full year earlier, but better late than never. Developers interested in adding PiP support to their Android TV apps should check out Google’s documentation, as there are several PiP-related features (such as APIs for transparency and the ability to set a title and subtitle) that are specific to TVs.