About Picture-in-Picture in Firefox

Revision Information
  • Revision id: 258790
  • Created:
  • Creator: Paul
  • Comment: Updates from Product team further to Bug 1818121
  • Reviewed: No
  • Ready for localization: No
Revision Source
Revision Content

The Picture-in-Picture feature allows you to pop videos out of their webpages into floating, always on top, windows, so you can watch while continuing to work in other tabs.

You can play and pause video, rewind, go full screen and follow along with subtitles.

Using picture-in-picture

Toggle

The Picture-in-Picture toggle appears when you hover over videos with the mouse cursor. Clicking on this will open the underlying video in the Picture-in-Picture player window:

  • If you have never used Picture-in-Picture before, it will appear as a small blue rectangle that slides out when you hover over it to explain the feature:
    toggle hover picture in picture 113
  • Once you have used Picture-in-Picture, it will appear as an icon over the video:
    PiPIcon

Right-click on the icon and then click on Move Picture-in-Picture Toggle to Left Side to move the icon to the opposite side of the video.

This feature is designed to work on most web videos. Though some videos will not display the toggle hovering over it. We only show it for videos that include an audio track, and that are also of sufficient size and play length.

Note: The toggle doesn't appear when a video is on full screen.

Full-screen view

Double-click the picture-in-picture player window to view the video in full-screen. Double-click again to exit full-screen.

Subtitles and captions

If you are using subtitles and captions while watching videos on the supported websites, they will also be viewable in Picture-in-Picture. It’s as simple as turning on the subtitles or captions on the in-page video player, and they will appear in Picture-in-Picture when launched.

Subtitles and captions for Picture-in-Picture are available on: YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Funimation, Dailymotion, Khan Academy, BBC.co.uk, Washington Post, Nebula, Tubi, Hotstar, and SonyLIV — plus websites that support WebVTT format like Coursera and Twitter. We’re working to expand the feature to more sites.

subtitles picture in picture 113

Context Menu

Another way to access Picture-in-Picture is via the context menu. If right-click on a web video, you’ll sometimes see the media context menu that looks like this:
context picture in picture 113

There’s a Picture-in-Picture menu item in that context menu that you can use to toggle the feature.

Many sites, however, make it difficult to access the context menu for web videos: YouTube, for example, overrides the default context menu with their own. You can get to the default native context menu by either holding Shift while right-clicking, or double right-clicking.

When a video is on full screen, the Picture-in-Picture menu item is not included in the context menu. You have to exit full screen to switch to Picture-in-Picture through the toggle or the context menu. (Note: The keyboard shortcut works on full screen.)

Keyboard shortcuts

To access via the keyboard, press the combination Ctrl + Shift + ]. Firefox will attempt to launch the most relevant video on the page into a Picture-in-Picture window, or will close it if already open.To access via the keyboard, press the combination command + Shift + option + ]. Firefox will attempt to launch the most relevant video on the page into a Picture-in-Picture window.

The following shortcuts are available for playback and volume controls:

  • Ctrl + command + : Mute
  • Ctrl + command + : Unmute
  • : Volume decrease
  • : Volume increase
  • : Seek back 155 seconds
  • : Seek forward 155 seconds
  • Ctrl + command + : Seek back 10%
  • Ctrl + command + : Seek forward 10%
  • Home: Seek to beginning of video
  • End: Seek to end of video
  • Space: Pause/Continue

To close the Picture-in-Picture window, press the combination Ctrl + Wcommand + W.

Disabling the Picture-in-Picture toggle

If you prefer to disable the toggle, so it does not appear over top of videos, there are two easy ways to do that: either on a site that has a supported video or in the settings.

Using the Picture-in-Picture toggle to disable it

  1. Find a video where you can see the Picture-in-Picture toggle.
  2. Right click on the toggle.
  3. Click Hide Picture-in-Picture toggle.
    PictureInPicture_icon

Enabling / disabling the Picture-in-Picture toggle in Settings

disable pip in settings 113