The latest Firefox Nightly build introduces a feature that significantly enhances its picture-in-picture (PIP) functionality — and I’m absolutely loving it!
In the current stable versions of Firefox, you can pop out video content from supported websites like YouTube and Amazon Prime manually by clicking a button. This allows you to continue watching content in a small, floating window while you switch tabs, minimize the browser, etc.
Picture-in-picture mode also lets you pause/resume playback, view a progress bar, mute audio, enter full-screen, and even view subtitles — some features vary depending on the streaming site or service.
I find this feature incredibly useful, and I often use it when following along with a YouTube tutorial in an app or process (as I actually work through it).
But the latest Firefox 130 Nightly build peps PIP up.
It has an option to automatically pop-out (supported) video content in picture-in-picture mode when you switch from the tab the content is playing on. This means you don’t have to click the PIP button on the video embed first, then switch tab – just switch tab and out it pops.
Auto-open picture-in-picture in action
Then, when you go back to the original tab, the video snaps back into the player embed on the web page, and continues playing without missing a beat.
I find this a beautifully efficient approach, although not everyone is going to be as enthusiastic about it as I am. I guess that’s why this is an opt-in labs feature and not a default behavior—for now.
Just wish I could set the default position for the PIP window to spawn at.
If you fancy checking it out, you can download the latest Firefox nightly build for Linux (or macOS or Windows, if you’re on those) from the Mozilla website.
Ubuntu users can also install Firefox Nightly from the Snap Store (requires switching to the --edge channel), or by adding the official Mozilla APT repo and installing it from there, or download the latest nightly DEB from the Mozilla FTP server instead.
Screenshot of Firefox Labs in Firefox Nightly build
To try it, open Firefox Nightly, go to Settings, go the Labs section, locate the new ‘Picture-in-Picture: auto-open on tab switch’ option, check the box, and—bam: you’re good to go.
As with many nightly feature tests, there’s no guarantee this new option will make it in to a stable build, or, if it does, which version it’ll land in – we’ve seen plenty of promising Firefox features end up adrift in a sea of other priorities.
Let me know what you think of this – good? bad? annoying? time saving? – in the comments!