Firefox is often regarded as among the most privacy-centric browsers, but that isn’t its sole USP. This offering from Mozilla also comes baked in with many useful tools and functionalities.
Well, it has even incorporated features you could only find via extensions on other browsers. One such entry is the PiP Mode. Also known as Picture-in-Picture mode, it condenses the video playback to one corner of your screen.
The benefit? It straightaway translates to the ease of multitasking, as you could continue with your work using another app and simultaneously check out everything intriguing that’s going on in that video.
Furthermore, since that PiP window acts as an overlay, you could drag and drop it to any corner of your screen. Then with just a single click, you could play/pause the video, close it, or expand it to its default size – all from within the PiP mode.
Ultimately, PiP mode proves to be a handy alternative, without even the need to take the help of any third-party add-ons.
So, let’s now check out the steps to enable Firefox’s Picture-in-Picture mode and the instructions to control and tweak its settings effectively.
Enable Picture in Picture (PiP) Mode
By default, the picture-in-picture mode option is enabled on the Firefox browser. However, for some reason, if it isn’t working, then you can re-enable the option under the Browsing settings section on Firefox.
Here are the steps to enable the picture-in-picture video controls option in Firefox:
- Launch the Firefox browser on your PC.
- Click on the More
menu situated at the top right. - Select Options from the menu list.
- Scroll down to the Browsing section.
- Click on the checkbox Enable picture-in-picture video controls.
This will enable an option to display the picture-in-picture icon on the video streaming player. Irrespective of which streaming site you visit, an overlay pip mode icon will appear on the video screen.
PiP Mode via Icon
Now that we have enabled the picture-in-picture option on Firefox, we can quickly start the PiP mode stream on the websites.
Here are the steps to launch the PiP on Firefox using the PiP icon:
- Launch the Firefox app browser.
- Head over to start any YouTube video on the browser.
- Click on the Watch in Picture-in-Picture icon on the right inside the video.
The PiP mode option will be displayed via a small icon if you have already used this feature.
After clicking on the PiP icon, the video will minimize size and move to the lower right corner of your screen. At the same time, the video player would also notify you that the video is being played in PiP mode.
You can now drag and drop this overlay window to any corner of your screen across any of the opened tabs. Likewise, when you hover the mouse cursor over this window, you shall see player controls covered in the following section.
So this was one way of trying out Firefox’s Picture in Picture mode. But that’s not the only one. Some popular video streaming sites (such as YouTube) also support enabling the said option via the Context Menu.
PiP Mode via Context Menu
This option may not be supported on all video streaming sites, but you can try it. I checked the DailyMotion, and it doesn’t have the context menu for PiP mode. However, it’s working on the YouTube videos without any issues.
Here are the steps to enable the picture-in-picture menu using the context menu:
- Open any video of your choice on YouTube.
- Right-click on the video, and you shall get the default YouTube context menu.
- Right-click again on the same video, and you will get the Firefox context menu this time.
- Select the Picture-in-Picture option from the context menu.
The video would now start playing in picture-in-picture mode. The rest of the controls will be similar to what we had in the previous section.
Picture-in-Picture mode controls
The Firefox Picture-in-Picture mini-player has all the control that you need. If you click on the mini-player icon, it will exit the PiP mode and take you back to the default viewing screen. We also have the option to Play and Pause the video on the bottom right.
On the other hand, if you wish to close the video, click on the icon at the top right.
Bottom Line
So with this, we conclude the guide on the steps to enable the Picture-in-Picture or PiP Mode in Firefox.
Writing transcripts of the live tech events always proved challenging since I constantly switched between my Docs and YouTube tab. But thanks to this nifty built-in feature of Firefox, it has streamlined this multitasking functionality.
Plus, the fact that it could be enabled with just two right clicks makes it more accessible in terms of accessibility.
What are your views on Firefox allowing the Picture-in-Picture or PiP mode for all streaming sites? Do share with us in the comments section below.
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