Did Cam v4 quietly get a new floating Live Stream (picture-in-picture) feature?

[Crease]

I could’ve sworn this was true when I wrote it a few days ago:

@Crease

Cam Pan v3 and Cam v4 use an on-screen “expand” button (similar to https://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/fullscreen_2089670) to enable landscape mode (I don’t have my phone set to auto-rotate), but Cam OG uses a “screen rotate” button (similar to https://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/phone_733473), so even though Cam OG certainly doesn’t use the “OG” “old” UI, it’s not quite the same as the “new” UI, either.

Today I see that my Cam v4s in Live Stream view don’t have that “expand” icon anymore. Now they have the “screen rotate” icon in its place, and next to that is an icon that looks like this:

If I tap that, then the Wyze app minimizes and gives me a floating Live Stream window that I can move around on top of other apps while I use those, like this:

Not Continuing Cam Plus Lite is a bait and switch

V3Pro is more fun. I can watch my front door with the app closed I think the V4 may get it also someday. [pro]

Not Continuing Cam Plus Lite is a bait and switch

Yes The How Part: Open the cam to live view tap the screen then tap the box I have put the yellow square around. You need to be very fast to tap it before it goes back to the regular view. [How]

Has that been present for a while and I just didn’t notice it until today, or is it actually a newly-enabled feature? I really thought that what I wrote a few days ago was true (and I believe that I even confirmed it for myself at the time before posting).

I’m seeing this in both the v2.5x and v3.0 apps running on full Android but not in the v2.5x app running on Android Go (though that app is showing the “screen rotate” icon instead of the “expand” icon).

[Antonius]

I answered here:

Not Continuing Cam Plus Lite is a bait and switch

Maybe it was in the July firmware for the V4 .0367 ? I see it there now, 2.50.9 iOS app. If you tap on the two screen icon top right it will close but you will take you back to the live view. If you tap the X upper left it will close but then you have to go back to the WZYE app to close the live view is what I have found. [FM]

[Crease]

I saw that. I’m continuing the discussion here rather than keeping that other topic on an unrelated tangent.

@Antonius

Maybe it was in the July firmware for the V4 .0367 ?

It’s not listed on the Release Notes & Firmware page, at least not that I see.

There’s definitely a UI difference between the Android and iOS experiences then. Where you have an upper-left , I see a . Where you have the upper-right minimize/float icon, I see the . If I tap the floating viewer window to make those icons visible, then I also get an “expand” icon in the center of the floating window and a muted speaker icon below that.

The behavior isn’t entirely consistent between the different app versions. This is what I see in the v2.5x app:

• If I tap the on the floating Live Stream window, then that opens the Android setting to Allow picture-in-picture (already enabled).
• If I tap the , then the viewer just closes.
• If I tap the speaker icon, then it changes from muted to unmuted, and then can hear the camera’s audio.
• If I tap the “expand” icon, then it’s like being right back on the regular Live Stream screen for that camera, and the app behaves as expected.

This is what I see in the v3.0 app:

• If I tap the on the floating Live Stream window, then that opens the Android setting to Allow picture-in-picture (already enabled).
• If I tap the , then the viewer just closes.
• If I tap the speaker icon, then it changes from muted to unmuted, and then can hear the camera’s audio.
• If I tap the “expand” icon, then it’s like being right back on the regular Live Stream screen for that camera, but any attempt to back out of that screen automatically minimizes the entire Wyze app (no more floating viewer).

The v3.0 app does seem to be getting into regular Live Stream faster, so I can get to this feature faster (compared to v2.5x, at least so far today), but that last point is not the behavior I would expect as a user, so that feels buggy to me, kind of like what @carverofchoice described elsewhere:

@carverofchoice

• When I’m in the devices tab and I hit “back” (back swipe on Android), I keep expecting that it will “back” me out to the default screen (favorites page), but it just closes the app without warning. I feel like the last back swipe should take me to the default screen of the favorites page before the app minimizes on me unexpectedly.

Incidentally, the setting that would be necessary to enable this feature on my tablet (Settings ➜ Apps ➜ Special app access ➜ Picture-in-picture) doesn’t exist, so I imagine it’s not even present in Android Go, which would make sense, because that’s a “lighter” variant of Android intended for use on lower-end hardware.

[Crease]

@p2788deal

I just checked a V4 and the feature is there. But it says, to dismiss, just drag the window to the bottom of the display.

That worked for me on Android 10. On Android 13, I could drag to the bottom but then had to continue dragging my fingertip to a inside a circle that popped up and release my finger there to dismiss it, so just tapping the floating Live Stream window and then tapping the seems easier.

@p2788deal

Edit - the window was dismissed but I find the parent window was still active.

That was true for me with the v2.5x app on Android 13.

That was also true for me with the v3.0 app on Android 10…only it was multiple parent windows for the Wyze app. When I have some time to play with it more, I might count the number of times I activate and dismiss the feature and see about capturing some screenshots and/or video to demonstrate.

[Crease]

I’ve played around a little more with the PiP feature and also found what seems to be a relevant Help Center article, but it doesn’t mention Cam v4.

I’m definitely seeing what seems to be multiple instances of the Wyze app spawned by this feature when I use it. Some appear to be “actual”/“normal” full-screen Wyze app instances, where hitting the “back” button actually navigates backward in the app as expected (instead of minimizing the app as I previously described). Some appear to be faux-screen app instances, where the app “window” is taking up the entire screen (even able to show me three cameras in a Group view) but behaves like the PiP window and doesn’t respond to user interaction in the way that the actual full-screen app would.

For example, if I’m looking at this maximized 3-camera Group and tap one of the camera views, this “instance” of the app (behaving like a “child window” but appearing to the user as an actual full-screen app instance would) just refreshes all three camera views, briefly showing the “Loading Live Stream” message overlay on each and then resuming the Live Streams. If this was the “actual”/“normal” app, then my tap should’ve taken me to the Live Stream screen for that single camera that I selected.

I don’t know if this behavior is a Wyze app issue, an Android issue, an Android version issue, or something else. It just seems to be spawning these PiP windows in a weird way.

With this testing, I ended up with 3 different “instances” of the Wyze app showing up in my recent/running applications view that I had to swipe away in order to launch a new instance of the Wyze app and start over. When I first discovered this feature and played with it, by the time I was done and initially noticed what had been happening, I had 5-6 (or more) instances of the Wyze app to swipe away.

I have been unable to replicate this multiple-“instance” behavior with Wyze app v2.5x, although I can use the PiP feature in that version of the app.

This testing/experience leaves me feeling like the v3.0 app isn’t cleaning up after itself very well, and I wonder if this seemingly sloppy clean-up is contributing to the battery drain and data use issues that other users have reported. (I haven’t tried to formally test or document this myself, but I do have a strong impression that my battery is depleting more quickly with the v3.0 app than it was previously.)

Incidentally, I noticed just yesterday that the Smart Focus control (which has an icon similar to the Cam v4’s PiP icon) no longer has a “BETA” label, for whatever that’s worth.

[habib]

Is it just me, but I find PIP useless, Just another bell and whistle. Instead of focusing on real issues Wyze choose to dazzle us with useless crap

[Crease]

That’s totally fair, and I don’t disagree at all, especially if the implementation is somewhat broken, as it appears to be in the v3.0 app. I’d also rather see them focus on remediating longstanding issues, especially those known to affect a lot of users.

Thanks for attending my TED Talkreplying to my topic! It’s good to see you back, and I hope you had a great vacation!

[habib]

@Crease

Thanks for attending my TED Talkreplying to my topic! It’s good to see you back, and I hope you had a great vacation!

You are welcome, it was really nice to say the least. It’s been a really long time since I’ve been away from work for whole two weeks not to mention crossing some things of my bucket list.

[Antonius]

Welcome back the the WYZE Circus. . The gang have also been on vacation for two days or their Mom kicked them out of the house.

[habib]

@Antonius

The gang have also been on vacation for two days or their Mom kicked them out of the house.

I think they followed me down to Nova Scotia

[ssummerlin]

@habib

Is it just me, but I find PIP useless, Just another bell and whistle. Instead of focusing on real issues Wyze choose to dazzle us with useless crap

Agreed.