If you like working with a music video playing in the background or watching your favorite sports team while browsing social media, or maybe you just like to do two things at once, picture-in-picture (PiP) can be really useful. It allows you to dock a small window that displays video in a larger window on your computer or TV screen.
If you’re on a Mac, you can easily set the PiP for a YouTube video using Apple’s Safari or Google’s Chrome browsers.
This is the first time on how to use PiP in Safari, A great tweet from Ricky Mondello.
PiP using Safari
- Right click the YouTube Video twice. The first click will get you a menu that lets you copy the URL of the video, embed the code or do other YouTube related tasks. The second click will get you a more traditional menu.
- Click on “Enter Picture-in-Picture” option. Your video will shrink to a much smaller size.
- Open a new tab in your browser (or several if you want) and go to another site or you can leave the browser altogether. The video will continue to play.
- Move your cursor over the video to control the video. You can pause and restart, exit PiP mode, or close the window completely.
- To move the small video window, you can press down with one finger on your touchpad and use the other finger to move the window around your screen. If you are using a mouse, use the Command key.
There are several other ways to start PiP.
- While your video is playing, right click on the audio icon in the tab; the menu will contain the “Insert Picture in Picture” command. (Note: If you pause the video, you will not see the volume icon.)
- If you have a Touch Bar, use the PiP icon (it looks like a small filled rectangle over a larger, clear rectangle).
PiP using Chrome
After this article was published, a reader wrote to me and asked why I didn’t also include the way to do PiP on a Mac using Google’s Chrome browser. So I did some research and found out that you can have PiP on your Mac using Chrome – and use the built-in method (courtesy How-To Geek) or a Google PiP extension.
Use the built-in feature:
- Right click on the YouTube video you want to convert to PiP
- As with Safari, the first menu you’ll get will be YouTube’s right-click menu. Right click again (outside the menu). You will get a Chrome menu with a “Picture-in-Picture” selection; click this.
Again as in Safari, the PiP functionality is quite simple; You can move the video anywhere on the screen, pause and return to the YouTube window. However, don’t expect to get any subtitles with it; subtitles will continue to be posted on the original YouTube page.
Use Google’s PiP extension:
There is no discernible advantage to using the extension over the built-in right-click feature; both offer you the same simple (but effective) PiP feature.
- In the Chrome Web Store, Picture-in-Picture extension. Click the “Add to Chrome” button.
- You will be asked for permission to “read and change all your data on the websites you visit”.
- Once the extension is installed, you can access it by clicking the new PiP icon to the right of your address field or pressing option+P.
This much! Enjoy your video.
Update June 23, 2020, 10:08AM ET: This article was originally published on December 27, 2019 and has been updated to include instructions on PIP in Chrome.
