Pro Tip: How to watch video while checking email on iPad

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There goes my productivity. Thanks, Apple!
There goes my productivity. Thanks, Apple!
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Pro Tip Cult of Mac bugSo you’re watching a TV show or movie on your iPad and you hear the ding that means you just got a new email. You could double press on the Home button to bring up the multitasking bar and swipe over to your Mail app, but why?

One of the cool gosh-wow things of iOS 9 on a newer iPad is the picture-in-picture multitasking feature, which means you can switch over to any app while you continue watching that video.

Here’s how.

Picture-in-picture (PiP) is supported on iPad Pro, iPad Air or later, and iPad mini 2 or later, so be sure you’ve got one of those newer iPads.

Then, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got an app that has added PiP support. So far, I’ve been able to use it in Apple’s Video app and FaceTime, while AppAdvice promises it’ll work in Pocket (the offline web-reading app) and Hulu. Sadly, it’s not working for Netflix on my iPad. There may be more, so be sure to try it out in more than one app if it doesn’t work at first.

You can watch videos even while browsing the web.
You can watch videos even while browsing the web.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

For this tip, let’s use the Videos app. Tap on the Videos icon to launch it, then tap through to a Movie, TV Show, or Music Video you have in there. Once the video starts playing, press the Home button on your iPad. The video will shrink down to the lower right and continue playing atop the Home screen. Now you can navigate to any other app, like email, and launch it like usual. The video will continue playing until you tap it and choose to pause or cancel it with the icons there.

Swipe right to hide the PiP video from prying eyes.
Swipe right to hide the PiP video from prying eyes.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

You can pinch out with two fingers to make the video screen a bit larger, and you can also swipe it to the edge of your iPad to put it in sort of a docked position. Tap the little bar and it will pop right back out. Want to move it to any of the other three corners? Just tap and drag it over there; the PiP screen will snick right into place near any corner you place it.

When you’re done with your video in PiP, simply tap it once, and hit the first little icon overlay there, and the video will go back to full screen.

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