During the Google I/O Conference last May, one of the things that they showed off on-stage was the video calling app Duo working in the Picture-in-picture Mode that was being introduced with Android 8.0 Oreo. But since then, we haven’t heard about when it would actually roll out, until now. Justin Uberti, the technical lead for Duo announced on Twitter that the feature is now available for Duo users for devices that are already on Oreo.
If you need a bit of a refresher on what the PiP feature brings, you get to minimize and yet still run apps alongside other apps in this mode. For example, if you’re watching a YouTube video but you need to check something on your email, you can put the video on PiP mode so you can continue watching while browsing your email. Some of the notable Google apps that you can use in this mode are as mentioned, YouTube, Google Play Movies, and Google Maps.
Now you can add Duo video calling to this list. On the sample video that Uberti posted, you can see someone doing a video call on the app then minimizing it to check on their calendar. But the video call continues because of the Picture-in-picture mode. You can trigger it by simply hitting the home button.
From the Google I/O keynote: keep your Google Duo call going across apps, courtesy of Android O's new Picture-in-picture mode. pic.twitter.com/fNR1UfQcEv
— Justin Uberti (@juberti) May 17, 2017
Of course, you will only be able to enjoy this mode if your smartphone is already running on Android Oreo. The rollout has been pretty sporadic at best, but we’ve gotten used to that with these major Android updates of course. So you just have to wait before you can use Duo on Pip mode.
SOURCE: Google
