Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff.
We all know the struggle. Youre watching a show, or a video, but you also really want to get work done or do some browsing, so you flip to other Chrome tabs. Youll be able to hear your video, but not see it. Its a compromise weve all made from time to time but you dont have to make it.
Chrome actually has a built-in (albeit somewhat hard-to-find) picture-in-picture mode that lets you watch your videos while on other tabs. Its kind of like YouTubes mini-player, in that the video is shrunk down to a fraction of the size and stuck to the corner of your screen. In a perfect world, wed all have second or third monitors that allow us to watch videos at full size while doing other business, but this is a good compromise until that time comes.
[Read: Chrome 70s best new feature is picture-in picture]
There are two ways to use this feature without downloading third-party extensions. The first is the right-click method. When I put it like that, it makes it sound like it takes one right-click, but in some cases it might actually take two.
In YouTube, for example, when you right-click the video at first, youll get YouTubes own menu first. You have to right-click again to bring up the Chrome menu, but when you do, youll see the picture in picture option. This will put the video in a small window at the corner of your screen, but youre free to move it about as you please, or enlarge it.
Its not perfect, obviously the only things you can actually do with the miniature video are pause it or switch back to the full-size version. No scrubbing through the progress bar or captions or volume control. But still, its something.
There is, as always, a catch to using this method. Namely, it only seems to work flawlessly on YouTube videos. I couldnt, for example, find the option with Netflix, Facebook, or Vimeo videos. Luckily, there is an alternative: the Google picture-in-picture Chrome extension.
Download this extension from the Chrome store, and while the video is on, hit the picture-in-picture logo in the upper-right corner of Chrome. This will do the same thing as the right-click method, namely put your shrunken video in the corner of your screen, to be manipulated as you see fit. Both methods also put an icon on the videos home Chrome tab.
And thats all you need. Dont bother treating your vids like a podcast anymore actually watch them.
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