If you’ve been searching several websites looking out for tutorials on how to watch YouTube videos in Picture-in-Picture (PiP) mode on Google Chrome in Windows or Mac, rejoice!
You can not only watch YouTube videos but any videos (even if it is social media statuses) that you play in Chrome without any extensions. Yes, you heard it right! Excited, let’s quickly jump and find how-to.
Roundabout ways to enable PiP mode on Google Chrome for YouTube
Before getting into the details, let’s see the now widely known roundabout ways for enabling PiP mode. In Windows or Mac, below are some of the ways for watching YouTube videos in PiP mode using Google Chrome:
Miniplayer mode
This Picture-in-Picture mode is restricted only to YouTube site.
- Enter the Miniplayer mode by pressing the Miniplayer icon next to the Settings (gear) icon or press i when the video plays.
- There are controls for you to Pause (k), seek, and play the previous (Shift + P) or next video (Shift + N).
Double-click method
- After a YouTube video starts playing, right-click twice (you can also use Control-click twice if you use Mac) on it.
- First right-click will bring up YouTube-related context menu, next right-click will bring up video related context menu.
- Select Picture-in-Picture to enable PiP mode.
In Mac, this works in Safari for any webpages that use HTML5 for video playback. Just right-click and select Enter Picture in Picture. But this way doesn’t provide more video controls for you: You can only pause the video.
Use Picture-in-Picture Extension (by Google)
- You can use Google’s official PiP extension for not only watching YouTube videos but for any videos played.
- Go the Chrome Web Store and click Add to Chrome. Review the permissions and click Add extension. You can click Manage shortcut option in the confirmation box shown to alter the shortcut used for triggering PiP mode (Default: Option (or Alt) ⌥ + P for Mac, Alt + P for Windows).
- After any video starts playing, just click the extension icon in the top-right or enter the keyboard shortcut to enter PiP mode.
Enable Picture-in-Picture mode on Google Chrome for YouTube or any site videos without using extensions
Now that we’ve seen the currently present ones, let’s see the simplest way of triggering PiP mode without any extra clicks or extensions on any sites. Here we go:
You would’ve been aware of the media hub used to control media playback in Google Chrome. For those who don’t know, there will be a Media control icon displayed to the right of the address bar when any media is played on Chrome. You can use the media hub to pause, forward, rewind, and play the next or previous video (if it is a playlist). In addition to this, the latest release of Chrome brings Picture-in-Picture mode right to the media hub itself.
- To Enter picture-in-picture mode, you have to just click the PiP icon in the media Hub after you start playing any video.
- Once you enter the PiP mode, you can re-size the window up to a particular size and drag to anywhere on the screen.
- You can Pause, or play the Previous or Next track (if it is a playlist). You can also replay once the video has completed playback.
Once a video has entered the PiP mode, it displays as “Playing in picture-in-picture” in the YouTube video. Also, when a tab’s video plays in PiP mode, the PiP icon is displayed in that tab for easy identification.
Also, this is a spin-off of the Picture-in-Picture Extension.
Additional tips:
- You can click the media hub to quickly return to the media playing tab.
- You can use the media hub to control your media playback from any tab.
- You can click the Exit picture-in-picture icon in the Media hub to exit PiP mode and instantly resume playback in the original location.