About Picture-in-Picture in Firefox

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  • Revision id: 262057
  • Created:
  • Creator: Mozinet
  • Comment: menu and section formatting
  • Reviewed: Yes
  • Reviewed:
  • Reviewed by: AliceWyman
  • Is approved? Yes
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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 have multiple Picture-in-Picture windows open and move or resize them to your liking.

Picture-in-Picture offers a convenient way to control video playback. You can play, pause, mute, skip forward or backward, or go fullscreen without having to leave your current tab.

PiP_video

How to use Picture-in-Picture

On-screen video toggle

The Picture-in-Picture toggle appears when you hover over videos with the mouse cursor.

Picture-in-picture toggle before your first click on it:

PiP_video_toggle

And after your first click on it:

PiP_video_toggle_icon

Clicking the toggle will open the underlying video in the Picture-in-Picture player window.

Change the position of the toggle

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

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

Launch Picture-in-Picture from the right-click menu

Another way to access Picture-in-Picture is via the right-click-menu menu. Simply right-click on a video for option to play, mute, speed, and more.

PiP_contextMenu

Many sites, make it difficult to access the context menu for web videos: YouTube, for example, overrides the default context menu with their own.

Tip: 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.)

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.

Note: 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.

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 5 seconds
  • : Seek forward 5 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
  • Double-click or F: Enter or exit full-screen mode
  • Ctrl + W: Close Picture-in-Picture window

Common Questions

How do I disable Picture-in-Picture?

If you prefer to disable the toggle, so it does not appear over top of videos, you can do that using the Picture-in-Picture toggle or from the settings.

Enabling/disabling from the toggle:

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

Enabling/disabling Picture-in-Picture the toggle from the settings:

If you don’t want to see the controls while hovering, you can hide that option in Firefox. (Note: You can still turn on Picture-in-Picture by right-clicking on a video.) Or you can use this to re-enable the control when you want to use it again.

  1. Click the menu PhotonMenuButton button, and select Settings.
  2. In the General panel, scroll down to the Browsing section.
  3. Uncheck the box next to Enable picture-in-picture video controls.

Pip_browsing_section

If you later want to re-enable the controls, simply add back the check mark.

Why is the Picture-in-Picture toggle not showing when a video is on full-screen mode?

  • The toggle only appears for videos that are longer than 45 seconds and that include an audio track.
  • The toggle doesn't appear when a video is on full screen.