With Picture-in-Picture, you can effortlessly detach videos from their webpages and enjoy them in floating, always-on-top windows. This lets you continue working in other tabs while still keeping an eye on your videos.
Picture-in-Picture offers incredible flexibility – you can open multiple video windows and easily adjust their positions and sizes to match your preferences. Whether you're learning from educational content, enjoying entertainment, or following online tutorials, Picture-in-Picture simplifies video playback with essential controls like play, pause, mute, skip and full-screen options – all accessible without leaving your current tab. Seamlessly multitask with Picture-in-Picture in Firefox, enhancing productivity and engagement. This article will guide you through its various functionalities and usage, empowering you to optimize your video viewing experience.
Table of Contents
How to use Picture-in-Picture
On-screen video toggle
The Picture-in-Picture toggle becomes visible when you hover your mouse cursor over videos.
Picture-in-picture toggle before your first click on it:
And after your first click on it:
By clicking the toggle, the underlying video will open in the Picture-in-Picture player window, providing you with a seamless viewing experience.
Change the position of the toggle
Right-click the icon and then click
to move the icon to the opposite side of the video.Launch Picture-in-Picture from the address bar
Starting in Firefox version 116, you can easily launch Picture-in-Picture when visiting pages with a single video. Simply locate the icon positioned on the right-hand side of the address bar to activate this feature. This icon works hand in hand with the on-screen video toggle, and you'll find it exclusively on pages containing one video. For pages with multiple or no videos, the icon remains hidden.
Launch Picture-in-Picture from the right-click menu
Another way to access Picture-in-Picture is via the right-click menu. Simply right-click a video for option to play, mute, speed and more.
Note: Some sites might make it challenging to access the context menu for web videos. For instance, YouTube overrides the default context menu with its own custom options.
Tip: To reach the default native context menu, you have two options. You can either hold down the Shift key while right-clicking, or you can perform a double right-click.
Additionally, when a video is in full-screen mode, the Picture-in-Picture menu item won't be available in the context menu. To switch to Picture-in-Picture, you'll need to exit full screen and use either the toggle or the context menu. Remember, the keyboard shortcut for Picture-in-Picture still functions even in full-screen mode.
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. Just turn on the subtitles or captions on the in-page video player before launching the Picture-in-Picture option, so they can appear automatically.
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 + WCommand + W: Close Picture-in-Picture window
Common Questions
How do I disable Picture-in-Picture?
You can tailor your Picture-in-Picture experience by disabling the toggle from appearing over videos. This can be done either through the Picture-in-Picture toggle directly or by making changes in the settings.
- Enabling/disabling from the toggle:
- Find a video where you can see the Picture-in-Picture toggle.
- Right-click the toggle.
- Click
- Enabling/disabling from the Settings panel:
If you don’t want to see the controls while hovering, you can hide that option in Firefox Settings. (Note: You can still turn on Picture-in-Picture by right-clicking on a video.) You can also use this to re-enable the control when you want to use it again.- In the Menu bar at the top of the screen, click and then select or , depending on your macOS version.Click the menu button and select .
- In the panel, scroll down to the Browsing section.
- Uncheck the box next to Enable picture-in-picture video controls.
If you want to re-enable the controls later, simply add back the check mark.
Why don't I see the Picture-in-Picture toggle?
- 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.
- Developers can also opt to exclude the Picture-in-Picture button from videos hosted on their domains and inform users that the Picture-in-Picture experience might not be the best fit for their website. In such cases, Firefox will display a notification indicating that Picture-in-Picture is not recommended for that particular website. However, you retain full control and can override this recommendation by activating the Enable anyway option. This empowers you to choose to use Picture-in-Picture, even if the developer discourages it.