YouTube TV’s Multiview feature is reportedly rolling out to iOS devices, giving iPhone owners a new, immersive way to watch sports.
News of this update comes from multiple users on the YouTubeTV subreddit who claim they have just received the update option on their smartphones. One person even shared one short video from their iPhone playing four different basketball games at once – well, one is a commercial, but you can tell it’s basketball thanks to the ESPN banner.
We don’t know the full capabilities of Multiview on YouTube for iOS. According to 9To5Google it can be activated from the app’s Home tab, but it “only works with certain games” and doesn’t have the same features as the smart TV version.
Multiview on iOS apparently can’t show sports scores next to a broadcast, and it doesn’t have one Last channel shortcut to jump between recently viewed channels. There is a performance difference, but regardless of what it can’t do, Multiview on mobile is still very useful to have, especially now during March Madness.
Availability
It looks like this isn’t a limited rollout as one company representative told Reddit users the feature will appear in a patch that will be available on all iOS devices. You must have YouTube version 8.11 installed to see this option.
The feature is also coming to iPadOS, as another user claims to have the patch on his iPad Pro 12.9. Granted, it’s difficult to watch four sports games on their iPhone because the small screen shrinks each window considerably, but iPad owners should have a better viewing experience.
A Android version seems to be in the works, but won’t be released for a while. The same representative said the update will arrive within “the coming months,” although it could arrive sooner than expected. One user claims to have received a notification after opening the YouTube app on his Android with information about Multiview. But when they checked, it wasn’t really there.
We reached out to Google and asked them to confirm whether the iOS release will reach everyone or just a select few. We’ll update this story if we learn anything new.
Until then, check out Ny Breaking’s list of the best iPhone for 2024 if you’re looking to upgrade.