New Firefox update could allow for multiple PiP windows

Nov 30, 2020 10:43 GMT  ·  By

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 12 months or so, you probably noticed that most browser developers are now focusing heavily on Picture-in-Picture, a feature allowing users to watch a video in a dedicated popup while using the app on a different page.
 

Firefox is one of the first browsers that embraced PiP, and now it’s also one of the first to release a massive upgrade going forward.

As discovered recently by TechDows, the next major version of Firefox will support multiple PiP windows, meaning that you would technically be allowed to watch multiple videos at the same time on your screen, all while continuing to do whatever you want in the browser.

This feature is already live in the Nightly build of Firefox, and it should go live for production devices rather sooner than later. However, given it’s not enabled by default, I think it could take longer before Firefox receives the multiple PiP window support, so there’s a chance it won’t be there in version 84.

The good thing is you can already give it a try by simply enabling a dedicated flag in the about:config screen in the browser. This one is called:

media.videocontrols.picture-in-picture.allow-multiple And it must be set to true in order to be active.

Once you relaunch Firefox, you should be able to run multiple PiP windows on the screen at the same time using the very same procedure – right-click the video and then select the Picture in Picture mode.

Mozilla has obviously remained completely tight-lipped on everything related to this feature.

PiP debuted in Firefox 71 on Windows and Firefox 72 on Linux and macOS, and is supposed to work with the majority of videos that you find online, not just on YouTube. Mozilla explains:

“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. 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 that the toggle doesn't appear when a video is on full screen.”

PiP in Firefox also comes with keyboard shortcut support, so you can control certain features without touching the mouse. The following shortcuts are available right now for the current implementation of PiP in Firefox:  

  • Ctrl + ↓: Mute
  • Ctrl + ↑: Unmute
  • ↓: Volume decrease
  • ↑: Volume increase
  • ←: Seek back 15 seconds
  • →: Seek forward 15 seconds
  • Ctrl + ←: Seek back 10%
  • Ctrl + →: Seek forward 10%
  • Home: Seek to beginning of video
  • End: Seek to end of video
  • Space: Pause/Continue

Firefox 84 is projected to go live on December 15, and in addition to these possible PiP improvements, it’s also the last one to support Flash Player. Adobe is killing off its software in December, so beginning with Firefox 85, Mozilla will officially pull support for Flash Player too, meaning that Firefox 84 will be the last build to include code for Adobe’s platform.

Flash support has already been pulled from Nightly and Beta builds of Firefox. Version 85 is projected to launch for production devices on January 26, so it won’t be long until Flash Player gets the ax completely for Firefox users. The Adobe Flash plugin will stop loading Flash content on January 12.