The picture-in-picture window — the small floating video that stays on top while you work — has been in Chrome for years, but you have had to summon it by hand: right-click the video twice, choose the option, and remember to close it. Google is now making it automatic. Play a YouTube video in Chrome, switch to another tab, and the video drops into a corner window by itself; return to the YouTube tab and it slides back.
What it is for
The use Google describes is the tutorial: a video explaining how to do something in a spreadsheet, a design tool or a form, which you need to watch while doing it in the next tab. Today that means either two monitors or the click-click dance every time you switch. With auto-PiP the video follows you, pauses when you pause it, and can be dragged anywhere on the screen. The same behaviour will apply to music and podcasts on YouTube, which is most of what many people use the site for at a desk.
How to get it now, and later
The feature exists today through Google’s own Picture-in-Picture Extension in the Chrome Web Store, which now includes an automatic mode. Google says it will move into the browser itself as a permission in site settings — the same place camera and notification permissions live — so that you can allow YouTube to open PiP automatically and deny it to other sites. It works on Windows 10 and 11, macOS and ChromeOS, and can be switched on or off at any time; Android and iPhone use their own system-level PiP and are unaffected.
What it does not solve
Two things. YouTube’s background play on phones — the video continuing when the app is closed — remains a Premium feature, and desktop auto-PiP does not change that; it works because on a desktop the tab is still open. And it will not silence the ads: a video that moves into the floating window carries its pre-roll with it.
The Bangladesh use
A large part of the country’s technical education happens on YouTube in exactly the way Google describes — a freelancing tutorial in one tab, Photoshop or a code editor in the next — on a single laptop screen, since a second monitor is a luxury. Auto-PiP is a small convenience designed for that person. Install the extension, enable “automatic” in its options, and the click-click dance ends today.
Source: Gadgets Now, via Prothom Alo.
