In today’s extremely fast-paced world, multitasking is the need of the hour, and who doesn’t love playing a video podcast or a music video while working? Picture-in-picture can be a very efficient feature to use when doing multiple things at the same time.
Picture-in-Picture (PiP) in macOS isn’t new. It has been around and evolving in parallel with iPadOS. It has different means of setting it up but it works in the same way. Although it’s a little bit different between web browsers within macOS and iPadOS, nevertheless let’s learn about how to enable Picture-in-picture on macOS.
Using Safari (in-built)
Step 1 
Step 2
- Open up the Safari web browser on your MacBook or iMac.
- Open up any video you want to stream from YouTube.
- Right-click once on the video, and then the youtube settings come on screen
- Right-click once again at the same place again and then click on “Enter Picture-in-Picture“
- You have to change the size and to pause-play the video while in Picture in Picture.
This procedure works in Safari on macOS Sierra and later.
Using Chrome (PiPer: Extension)
Amazon Prime 
Netflix 
Youtube
Well, for starters Chrome does not have the same ability as Safari has, an inbuilt PiP feature. For all chrome lovers, it’s once again an extension that comes to rescue. And it’s known as “PiPer”.
To download the extension and use it :
- Open up Chrome on your macOS
- Google “Piper extension” on search bar or follow this link.
- Click on “Add to chrome” and the extension has been added to your chrome web browser.
- Automatically you will see PiP active across all your streaming platforms, ready to use.
- You have many options once you click on the PiPer icon and start streaming, one is to pause and play, two is to go back to the main page where the video is streaming and the last one is where you can change the size of your PiP window using your mouse.
As you must have noticed, the Apple-built web browser, Safari, does have an edge over Chrome due to the fact that you don’t have to download extensions in order to do that same job. But the catch is, the in-built PiP on Safari only works for YouTube and not any other streaming platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video or Disney+, etc.
In order for Safari to have PiP on the other platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc, one has to download PiPer Extension and follow the exact same steps as above (given for Chrome).
You can download the PiPer extension for safari from here. It’s also available on the Mac App Store.
Final Thoughts
Let’s break this down in a simple way….
For users who use Google Chrome, the PiPer extension is a must, and to be honest, it’s great, it works seamlessly across all streaming platforms and does its job pretty well.
For users who rely on Safari and spend major time on a streaming platform like YouTube, it’s a no brainer. Safari and its inbuilt option is the way to go. But if you do want to stream it across the other platforms well, then all hail the PiPer Extension.
All in all, sometimes it does take time to download the extensions but its all worth it for any multi-tasker. Enjoy your PiP!
The products mentioned within this post are not sponsored and editorial content is not influenced by these.
