How to Enable Picture-in-Picture in Mozilla Firefox

It might sound weird for some, but Mozilla Firefox, the world’s second most-used desktop browser right now, still doesn’t feature picture-in-picture support, despite its rivals getting such capabilities last year.

Google Chrome, for instance, which is currently the number one browser out there, received PiP with the update to version 70 in October, while Vivaldi was updated with similar functionality in December.

However, as I told you earlier today, Mozilla is already working on adding picture-in-picture to Firefox, and the company is now experimenting with an early implementation in Firefox Nightly.

While it goes without saying that this feature is work in progress and some functionality is missing, you can already give a try to PiP in Firefox and get an early glimpse into what the browser is going to provide you with when this option makes it to production builds.

First of all, what’s picture-in-picture mode in a browser? Just like on traditional TVs with such functionality, PiP makes it possible to watch a video from YouTube or other services on top of other windows active on your screen or right on the desktop, all while working with other apps.

You can thus drag the video to a corner of the screen and keep it running no matter what you’re doing on the computer. This comes in super handy when working and watching a podcast, or simply when browsing the web and trying to watch a specific video.

In Firefox, the feature is available beginning with Nightly version 67.0a1 (2019-02-17) (64-bit), so any release newer than that should offer at least similar, if not improved, functionality.

Before anything else, you need to enable PiP in Firefox Nightly. To do this, in the browser type the following command:

Next, you need to see the feature in action. Open YouTube in Firefox and start playing any video you want. What you have to do next is to right-click the video twice – the first right-click fires up video controls, while the second opens the Firefox context menu. There’s now an option that is called:

Remember when I said the feature is still in its early days in Firefox? This is where you’ll finally see what I meant.

First and foremost, while in Google Chrome and Vivaldi you can simply pause the playback or close the PiP window with a mouse hover to reveal the buttons, you can’t do this in Firefox because the features are missing. So to close the window you need to right-click the popup and use the dedicated options in the menu there.

Also, you’ll notice that when enabling the video running in PiP mode, the YouTube audio disappears, and the only way to restore the sound is to return to the default playback method.

There’s not much you can do right now, but given the feature is a work in progress, Mozilla should roll out further refinements in the coming updates. No ETA is available as to when the feature could roll out to everyone in the stable version of Firefox, but I’m guessing it shouldn’t take long since it’s already in a pretty advanced development stage.