How To Watch Picture-in-Picture Videos On Chrome OS

Picture-in-picture (PIP) video playback is a near-universal feature for many people—unless you own a Chromebook, that is. There, the feature only works for a couple of apps, unlike the experience you’d get in web browsers and video streaming apps on Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS.

Support appears to be growing, however. The most recent Chrome OS update adds automatic PIP support for Netflix streams, which hopefully means more apps will support PIP in the future. But unlike other platforms, where switching to PIP is mostly automatic, the method for enabling PIP in Netflix’s Chrome OS app works differently than when watching a Youtube video in Chrome. Here’s how to enable PIP on the two Chrome OS apps that support it.

Netflix

While watching Netflix in the Chrome OS app, simply swap to another app and the video will shrink down into a smaller window and continue playing. You can also tap/click the video to return to full screen, play/pause, or drag it to other parts of your screen if it’s obstructing another app.

Google Chrome

One of the only other Chrome OS apps with PIP support is the Chrome browser itself. The feature will let you watch just about any video content in a PIP window, which means that just about every video platform or website that supports Chrome can technically be played in a PIP window as long as you’re watching through the browser.

You’ll need to first download and install this official Chrome extension. Then, while you’re watching a video, press “Alt + P” to pop the video out into a separate, smaller video player. The video will continue playing even while you browse other tabs and apps, and it can be dragged around the screen. Tapping or clicking the video will also bring up basic playback functions.

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