How to Use Picture-in-Picture in Chromium Microsoft Edge

[The AchieVer]

How to Use Picture-in-Picture in Chromium Microsoft Edge

The transition from EdgeHTML to Chromium allows Microsoft to add several new features to Edge browser, including functionality that’s already available in other browsers like Google Chrome.

This is a major benefit of the Chromium engine, as Microsoft Edge would technically have the same feature lineup as Google Chrome.

In other words, Edge would no longer be the best browser to download Google Chrome, but a very capable replacement that’s very likely to convince many Windows 10 users to stick with it.

As part of the feature lineup that Microsoft borrows from Google thanks to the migration to Chromium is support for Picture-in-Picture (PiP), a feature that’s also offered to Chrome users.

PiP is basically a feature that makes it possible for users to watch videos on YouTube while browsing the web or working on a computer keeping on screen nothing more than just the actual window where the content is playing.

The way you can use this in Microsoft Edge is very similar to the one in Google Chrome, mostly because of the Chromium engine that powers both. So here’s what you need to do to activate Picture-in-Picture in Microsoft Edge.
 

 

 

First and foremost, you must obviously run the new Chromium-powered Microsoft Edge. Point the browser to YouTube.com – Picture-in-Picture should work with several other video sharing services, but for now, only YouTube and a couple others seem to be supported.

Once you start playing a video in the new Edge browser, you need to right-click the playing video twice – this is necessary because the first right-click fires up the standard context menu with video controls like video URL, embed code, and loop options. A second right-click brings up additional options, including the Picture-in-Picture mode that we’re talking about here.

Once you enable this playing mode, a floating video window should show up in the bottom right corner of the screen. You can hit the play button and the window stays on screen, playing the video regardless of what you’re doing on the device.

There aren’t a lot of options in this window because you’re only provided with the standard play/pause options and a small X that lets you close the window. An expand button is also available if you want to exit the PiP mode and return to the standard playing mode on YouTube.
 

 

 

There’s not much you can expect from this feature in a browser, so don’t expect any major improvements to be implemented by Microsoft in the next updates.

Microsoft Edge itself is still in the very early development stages, so the version that we’re trying out here isn’t an official release, but only a leaked build that was compiled by the company a few weeks ago.

Microsoft originally promised to roll out a preview build of the Chromium-powered Microsoft Edge in early 2019, and given the leaked version is already here, I’m guessing we’re not very far from the moment the company would ship it to registered testers.

As for the stable version of the new Microsoft Edge, expect it to go live later this year, but an ETA in this regard isn’t yet available. Obviously, Microsoft takes its time to complete the development of the browser, especially as it’d be offered not only to Windows 10 users, but also to those running older versions of Windows, Linux, and macOS.

PiP also exists in other browsers out there in addition to Google Chrome, including Vivaldi and Opera. Mozilla is also working on a similar feature for Firefox, so sooner or later, pretty much all big browsers will come with such capabilities.

 

 

 

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