Firefox Community Forum

Hello,

I'm experiencing an issue with YouTube video playback in Firefox. When I watch a video in Picture-in-Picture (PiP) mode and then close the PiP window, the video automatically pauses on the main tab in the browser.

My expectation is for the video to continue playing in the background tab after the PiP window is closed, similar to how it works, for example, in Opera GX browser.

I have already tried changing the media.videocontrols.picture-in-picture.pause-on-disable setting to false in about:config, but this did not resolve the issue. The video still pauses.

I believe it would be a significant convenience if Firefox allowed videos to continue playing in the background rather than pausing them when the PiP window is closed.

Is there any way to fix it?

When using the picture-in-picture feature, the spacebar is meant to be a keyboard shortcut to pause or continue the video. This is shown on the tooltips for the UI elements in the picture-in-picture feature, and on the keyboard shortcuts in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-picture-picture-firefox#w_keyboard-shortcuts

However, what actually happens when I press the spacebar key is it instead activates the last UI element to have been clicked on in the picture-in-picture.

For example, if I have last clicked the fullscreen icon to make the picture-in-picture fullscreen, pressing the spacebar will toggle the fullscreen mode, and not pause or continue the video.

Hello. For a while now I have been using the picture-in-picture feature to play a video in the corner while using other applications. It has been a great help as I have a single monitor.

Unfortunately, I have recently been encountering a severe issue with the feature over the last week. When attempting to use picture-in-picture while my computer is running a videogame (through Steam) my entire system will freeze. The audio still plays as normal, but the image is frozen and the system is unresponsive until I force a shutdown and reboot.

Any help at all in with this issue would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

Hardware Specs: GPU AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT CPU AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-Core Processor 3.70 GHz RAM 16.0 GB OS Windows 11 Home

Hello,

I'm currently experiencing an issue with Picture-in-Picture (PiP) on Firefox. I am using Ubuntu 24.04.2. When I activate PiP for a video, the floating window opens correctly, but it minimizes or disappears as soon as I switch tabs or click on another window. I believe PiP should remain visible and floating while browsing other tabs or applications. Could you please confirm if this is a known issue and whether there are any plans to address it for Wayland users? Thank you for your time and support.

Matias

Hi! I had the experimental feature auto picture-in-picture when switching off a video tab enabled, and I liked it most of the time, but occasionally I'd like to continue playing the video while browsing in a different tab but not have the picture-in-picture popup. Is there a way to close the popup but continue playing the video in the hidden tab?

From what I can tell the close button always stops the video and the to tab button doesn't have any way of switching off the tab with an active video without the popup coming back.

Thanks, David

Over the last 6 months, and increasing number of websites don't open on Firefox. I've noticed it most consistently on any of the wikipedia/wikimedia pages, but it's not just those. When I type in an address and press return, or click on a link, the browser just acts as if nothing has happened. There does not show me the loading symbole. If I ask it to open a new tab with the site, the address appears on the tab, but the page itself is just black. Other browsers have no problem loading the same sites. I am on a mac, and using a VPN. Restarting the browser doesn't help, though restarting the computer sometimes does.

Thank you,

For a while I've been able to put a youtube video in PiP mode while I do something in a videogame without any issues, but after yesterday's update every time I focus on the game the video becomes extremely laggy for no reason. I've turned off hardware acceleration (it was turned on before) and also tried it out in troubleshoot mode, but the result ended up the same. Has this happened to other people? Or a similar issue? Feels like more than a coincidence that this started happening after yesterday's update.

I am experiencing an issue with the Picture-in-Picture (PiP) functionality in Firefox on Ubuntu. Unlike on Windows, where the PiP window automatically appears when switching tabs or pages, this does not happen on my system.

When I manually activate the PiP feature by clicking the button, the window does appear; however, it is placed behind the browser window and remains at the lowest level among other open windows. This causes it to be obscured by other applications and requires me to manually bring it to the front and adjust its position every time.

Is there a way to automate this process or resolve the issue so that the PiP window behaves as expected (i.e., stays on top of other windows and works seamlessly)? Please let me know if there are any settings, extensions, or workarounds that could address this problem.

Thank you in advance for your assistance!

I just started having an issue with my browser where every time I tab out of a tab playing media, the pop-out video appears on its own. It's quite annoying. How do I stop this from automatically happening?

TikTok might not be working due to a few common reasons like a poor internet connection, server problems on TikTok’s side, an outdated app version, or too much cached data. Sometimes, the app might crash or fail to load videos properly. Restarting the app, clearing cache, or updating it usually helps fix the problem. bold text

Can't use YT picture in picture mode on Firefox when logged into my YT account. When I enable picture in picture on a video and scroll down to the comments, picture in picture mode turns off as soon as I scroll past the bottom of the video.

Happens only when I'm logged into my YT account on Firefox. Logout, it works. Logged in on Edge, it works. Logged into my second YT account on Firefox, it works. Only doesn't work for this one account.

Attached images if that helps. Last image shows exactly when picture in picture mode turns off when I'm scrolling

It says on https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-picture-picture-firefox#w_keyboard-shortcuts that the hotkey to toggle `PiP is CTRL Shift ]`. When I play a video it shows the PiP button, but the hotkey doesn't work. The other PiP keys like seeking and volume work. I'm on Fedora 41 with KDE 6.3.3 & Wayland.

Only hours after my previous use of the picture in picture function to watch YouTube via the mobile site on the app browser, the function suddenly stopped working.

It would play the videos when I was in other tabs, and with the app itself closed. However, as soon as I opened it as a picture in picture window, the video paused and refused to restart playing.

This far, I have:

• cleared the cache
• force quit the app and restarted
• double checked that picture in picture was enabled (it was)
• made sure the app is up to date (it is) and compatible with my phone (it is)
• made sure the Video Background Play Fit was still enabled and up to date (it is)

None of these issues has resolved the issue. As the issue is specific to the play to play function, and is not effected by closing the browser or switching tabs, I believe it is an issue with the function, not the site.

the pic in pic feature doesn't work. When I click the icon to go pic in pic Firefox opens a new full screen window with the video. I can't see any way to toggle it to be a small screen at the edge of the screen I'm working in.

Please advise.

I loved the picture-in-picture mode. However, when I closed the picture in picture mode, the video automatically stopped. Is there any ways where the video still plays even after I closed the picture in picture mode?