Google Chrome does many things right in the media consumption front. The most popular content platform YouTube works flawlessly as you’d expect a Google product to run on another Google product. For example, the Picture-in picture mode on YouTube works well on Chrome until you switch tabs and poof, it disappears. But that will change soon as Google is working on a flag to always have the PiP even when switching tabs.
Spotted first by Leopeva64 on X, Google is working on a new flag called “Browser initiated automatic picture in picture” which pops out a small window that can be placed anywhere on the screen. Although it’s a feature flag in Chrome Canary, users will be able to enable it from Site Settings, by enabling the Automatic picture-in-picture toggle.
The feature is currently in Chrome Canary and is similar to the pop-out feature on Firefox. However, unlike the same feature, it doesn’t seem to work on other popular video consumption websites like Dailymotion, Twitter, and Vimeo.
Consuming YouTube in picture-in-picture when multitasking has been frustrating for Chrome users, but this should fix that. However, PiP for YouTube on Chrome is only available for YouTube Premium users. Firefox’s pop-out feature, on the other hand, doesn’t require Premium subscription.
Firefox has a wider support video pop-outs across almost all embedded or individual video players and websites. The player pops out, and you can place it wherever you want. However, unlike Firefox, Chrome doesn’t let you skip forward or back (not even with arrow keys). Neither can you adjust the volume, or use the seek bar in the mini player unless you return to the tab, which is a bummer. Also, you cannot resize it like you’d be able to on Firefox.
Regardless, it’s good news for those who consume lots of YouTube videos when multitasking on Chrome. We hope Google adds more options in the mini player to let you control more aspects of the video. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Source: Beebom
