PiP playback, Picture in Picture, is certainly a feature of particular interest for those who want to follow a video, whatever it is, while continuing to work with other applications. It is a way to always have the movie on the screen in the foreground as you continue working on other apps. Here’s how to activate PiP Safari on macOS without third-party applications.
The trick is very simple, even if it might escape those unfamiliar with Safari. Apple has not prepared a button in plain sight to activate this feature but has hidden it under an already present button, which may not be so intuitive to press.
Activate PiP Safari on macOS
As already mentioned, there is no need to download any apps. Just start Safari, and navigate to the website where the video you want to watch is present. Let’s take YouTube, for example.
Play the video regularly. You will notice that a speaker symbol will appear in the URL address bar. Please note that this symbol only appears if the video’s audio is active. In case it isn’t, activate it.
At this point, click on the speaker icon with the right button to bring up a small submenu, within which the PiP mode will be available. Just click it to see the video stream “come out” from the YouTube page to move to the desktop.
Note that you can move the window to your liking in the four corners of the desktop. Not only that, but you can also shrink it to your preference.
To put the video window back in its place, simply move the mouse inside the video, and click the relative icon that will appear at the bottom.
PiP mode works with any video that is played on Safari. For example, it can also be used to move the video stream captured by the webcam during a videoconference on Meta or other similar platforms to the desktop.
