Picture-in-picture (PiP) is a great feature for us multitaskers. We have things to do, sure, but there are so many videos to watch, too. Why not kill two birds with one stone, and cross off our to-do lists with a floating media player in the corner of our screens?
The thing about PiP, however, is it’s not always the most convenient feature to use—especially on desktop. Usually, you need to learn how to activate it in the first place, which might entail a keyboard shortcut, or perhaps a double right-click to reveal a hidden menu. Unless your browser or app contains a convenient shortcut, it’s often more of a hurdle than it should be. Contrast that with how it works on mobile, where simply switching out of the app will automatically place the video in a PiP window.
This function makes a lot of sense for PiP: Usually, you want to use the feature in order to continue watching a video while moving away from its source, so it tracks to have the PiP window launch on its own once you switch to another window or app. In my view, the more platforms that adopt this behavior, the better.
So it is with Chrome: As reported by XDA Developers, Google is actively working on a feature for its web browser that automatically launches a PiP window when switching out of a YouTube tab. While Google announced the feature back in February, it hasn’t made it actively available for testing until now. Researcher Leopeva64 discovered this development, posting about it on X on Friday.
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How to force YouTube to automatically open in picture-in-picture
The feature is not live yet—it’s currently being tested in Google’s beta version of Chrome, Chrome Canary—but you should, in theory, be able to try it out right now. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be working for me at this time, but here are the potential steps you can take to try it out today:
First, you’ll need to be running Chrome Canary, which you can download for your platform of choice here. Then, head to chrome://flags, and search for “picture in picture.” There are two relevant flags here: “Browser initiated automatic picture in picture,” and “Auto picture in picture for video playback.” You can try enabling both to force the feature to work, but again, neither forces it to work on my end yet.
What do you think so far?
Next, open YouTube, and click the settings button directly to the left of the URL. Choose Site settings, then scroll down to Automatic picture-in-picture. By default, it should be set to Ask, which would force the site to ask each session if you want picture-in-picture, but you can choose Allow to enable picture-in-picture each time.
Now, start playing a video, and switch tabs. If the feature is working on your end, it should automatically present a PiP window when you leave the YouTube tab. If the setting is configured to Ask, you will need to approve the window permissions before it begins playing.
This feature might not be for everyone. If that’s the case, you can disable it completely from this same settings page by choosing Block.
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