The latest Firefox Nightly build provides a feature that dramatically improves how its picture-in-picture (PIP) feature works — and I’m totally digging it!
In current stable versions of Firefox you pop-out video content from (supported) websites like YouTube and Amazon Prime manually, by clicking a button. Doing this enables you to continue watching content in a small, floating window while you switch tabs, minimise the browser, etc.
Picture-in-picture mode also allows you to pause/resume playback, see a progress bar, mute audio, enter full-screen, and even view subtitles — some features are streaming site/service dependant.
I find this feature super handy, and use it often when following along with a YouTube tutorial in an app or process (y’know, as I actually do it).
But the latest Firefox 130 Nightly build peps PIP up.
It has an option to automatically pop-out (supported) video content in picture-in-picture mode when you switch away from the tab the content is playing it, i.e., you don’t have to manually click the PIP button and then switch tab, you just switch tab.
And when you go back to the original tab, the video pops back-in to the player on the web page!
I find it a beautifully efficient approach — not one everyone is going to be as enthusiastic about it as me, which why it’s only an opt-in labs test and not a default, built-in behaviour for now.
Just wish I could set a default position for the PIP window.
As with many nightly feature tests, there’s no guarantee this new option will make it in to a stable build, or, if it does, which version it’ll land in – we’ve seen plenty of promising Firefox features end up adrift in a sea of other priorities.
If you fancy checking it out you can download the latest Firefox nightly build for Linux (or macOS or Windows, if you’re on those) from the Mozilla website.
Ubuntu users can also install Firefox Nightly from the Snap Store (requires switching to the --edge channel), or by adding the official Mozilla APT repoand installing it from there, or download the latest nightly DEB from the Mozilla FTP server instead.
To try it, open Firefox Nightly, go to Settings, go the Labs section, locate the new ‘Picture-in-Picture: auto-open on tab switch’ option, check the box, and—bam: you’re good to go.