If I have to be honest, and I usually am, for me the best PIP of the existing web browsers is Firefox. My default browser is Vivaldi, Chromium base, and although its Pop Out, as they have called their picture-in-picture, has functions that we do not see in Chrome, I think it is still behind the Firefox proposal. Although it may seem silly, the red panda browser allows you to put your PIP window in full screen, and why you use it that way is a matter of taste. I like it.
In the last build In the Nightly version, an option has appeared in the Firefox Labs section that may be interesting... or not. That depends on each person and how they use the floating videos option. This function does the following: we are on YouTube or any other video service compatible with PIP, We change tabs and the video automatically appears floating. That is, it understands that we want to continue watching the video and offers us the possibility. If we return to the tab, in this case, YouTube, the floating window stops floating and goes into place.
How to activate this Firefox option
To activate option and thus be able to know if we are interested or not, the only thing we have to do is what is seen in the header screenshot, which is defining in itself: we open Settings/Firefox Labs and in the "Browsing" section, we mark the box which at the time of writing appears as “Picture-in-Picture: auto-open on tab switch”. No need to restart the browser or anything. And what we will see is also in the capture: being on YouTube, I click to return to the settings and the video appears floating.
But I think it still has some things to polish:
- He doesn't remember where we left the window and always opens it in the middle. Is this the best and what we want? In my case, no. If the video is in the middle it will cover whatever is in the new tab. I think if we move it to the side the first time, it should remember that position. Although this is a personal opinion.
- If we close the new tab, it does not put the video back in place. It simply floats. It's also something I don't personally like, but it may be the best behavior for others.
Editor's opinion
This function they are testing in Firefox Nightly leaves me a little, I don't know, with doubts. Assuming they fix the previous two points, do I want the video to float when I change tabs? I think it is a good idea. What makes me wonder is that it is a behavior that I will not always want to see. For example, suppose that the video in question is a podcast, which is on YouTube, or a tutorial on which I am going to base an article for LXA, and it is enough for me to listen to it. Why do I want the annoying video?
Right now, managing this is not the easiest. One option is to click on the browser window. The floating video will go to the background, or at least that's how it was in my tests. If there is a Linux desktop where this is not a possibility, you can also move the window to an edge where it covers very little of the browser.
In short, it is a option that can be useful because it is comfortable. But at the moment it is in the "laboratory" and in the Nightly version of Firefox. I say this because it is a test, and these things can reach the stable version in a matter of weeks, months or we could never see it. Be that as it may, and whatever they decide, I still maintain that for me the Picture-in-Picture of the red panda browser is the best of all, and this function, which is optional, will still make it stand out more than the rest.