How to use Firefox Picture-in-picture mode
Firefox has a picture-in-picture mode, much like Chrome and Safari do. This feature was added in Firefox 67 (current stable version is 68) and works on websites that use an HTML5 media player. One popular website is of course YouTube. For some reason, the feature isn’t enabled for everyone by default so here’s how you can enable and use Firefox Picture-in-picture mode.
Enable Firefox Picture-in-picture mode
Open Firefox and in the URL bar, enter the following.
about:config
Tap Enter, and accept the warning that you see on your screen. Once you’re on the preferences page, use the search bar at the top and look for the following preference.
media.videocontrols.picture-in-picture.enabled
Double-click it to change its value from False to True.
Use Firefox picture-in-picture mode
Once enabled, you can start using the picture-in-picture mode in Firefox. Navigate to a website with playable video content, and make sure it’s an HTML5 player. Play it, right-click the player. The first time you right-click the player, the context menu may, or may not, have a picture-in-picture option. If it does, select it and the video will be played in Picture-in-picture mode.
If the option isn’t there, right-click the player a second time, and the option should appear.
The picture-in-picture mode works as you’d expect it t; a floating player is added to your screen and it floats above all other windows i.e., it is pinned to the top. You can click and drag it to move it anywhere you want and it can be resized.
The player itself doesn’t feature a lot of controls; only a button to switch back to the window/tab it was originally playing in, and a play/pause button. There’s also a close button which, when clicked, will exit the floating Picture-in-picture mode player. The video will return to the tab it was open in, and it will be stopped at whatever point it was on when you closed the floating player.
Chrome added this feature almost a year before Firefox did and it didn’t work for all websites. It’s the same case with Firefox. It won’t work on all websites, even those using HTML5. One example of this is Facebook which has been using HTML5 for videos since 2015. Neither Chrome nor Firefox’s native picture-in-picture mode works with it. Chrome users can force it with an official extension from Chrome but, there’s nothing official from Mozilla to fill the gap.
You can probably find an add-on that, while not developed by Mozilla, will force other HTML5 players to work with picture-in-picture mode.
