WhatsApp iPhone update allows YouTube videos to open directly inside conversations

When a friend sends you a link to a clip and you tap it, you’ll no longer get kicked out of the messaging app

A picture illustration shows Whatsapp's logo reflected in a person's eye, in central Bosnian town of Zenica, March 13, 2015 (REUTERS/Dado Ruvic)

You can now watch YouTube videos directly inside WhatsApp conversations.

When somebody sends you a YouTube link on WhatsApp and you tap it, you’ll no longer get kicked out of the messaging app and forced into the YouTube app.

Instead, the YouTube clip will play inside a small floating window on your screen.

This means you can watch YouTube videos and message your friends at the same time, without having to switch between the YouTube and WhatsApp apps, which is easy to do but also quite annoying.

You can also jump between different chats without the clip pausing, stopping or disappearing.

The update also introduces the ability to drag the YouTube video window around your screen without the footage stopping or pausing, in order to get a better view of your messages.

You can resize the window too, or switch to full-screen mode with the tap of a button.

The update, which was first spotted by WABetaInfo, has started rolling out to iPhone users. It isn’t yet clear if it will come to Android.

The move has been expected for some time, but WhatsApp has only just enabled the feature properly.

Even without the update, some Android users can use both WhatsApp and YouTube simultaneously, but only if their phone offers split-screen functionality.

Unfortunately, that isn’t a particularly common feature, and the layout also feels clumsy.