Finally, Mozilla added support for Subtitles and captions to YouTube videos in Picture in Picture mode in Firefox, with Prime and Netflix support being worked on right now.
Firefox’s Picture in Picture Mode
While Chrome’s Picture in Picture mode depends on the website, Firefox’s PiP is a browser UI feature and its works with most web videos.
- Firefox’s PiP came along a nice way since its launch with Firefox 71.
- It lets you pop out or float video playing on the website and pin anywhere on the screen
- Player Window on hover over shows Pause and mute button controls.
- Supports multiple Picture-in-Picture.
Limitations:
- The feature works for most of the videos you watch on the web. However, some will not display the PiP button when you hover over them.
- For Firefox Picture in Picture to work, the video should contain an audio track and qualify a certain size and play length.
Why it is taking longer for Firefox to support captions and subtitles in PiP mode?
It is worth noting that every website, be it be YouTube or Netflix, or Prime video, implements captions differently from others. That made it difficult for Mozilla to find a common solution to the problem.
Having said that, the company has started working on site-specific adapters (behaviors) for Picture-in-Picture. This lets PiP detect, clone, and display subtitles and captions on specific video sites in the Player window.
Enable Subtitles and Captions support for YouTube videos in Firefox Picture in Picture mode
- Launch Firefox browser
- Head to about:config
- Agree to the warning by clicking “Accept the risk and continue“
- In the Search box, copy and paste “media.videocontrols.picture-in-picture.display-text-tracks.enabled“, change pref value to true.
- Now open Youtube, play any video, click on Subtitles/Captions button in the player window, hover over the video, and click on the Picture-in-Picture toggle button.
- Firefox PiP window shows subtitles or captions for the playing video.
Picture-in-Picture getting captions/Subtitles support for Prime and Netflix also
We’ve tested the feature and it worked fine on YouTube. There is no reason for captions to show up in Picture in Picture on other sites such as Prime Video and Netflix.
Do note this is just initial support that was landed in Nightly.
Mozilla is working to add Captions and subtitles support for Prime and Netflix Videos in Firefox Picture Picture Mode. We’re not able to test the feature on these site videos with pref turned on.
Summary:
The most requested subtitles and captions support has come to Picture in Picture mode in Firefox browser for YouTube now in Firefox 99 Nightly, with Netflix and Amazone Prime video in the works. The feature is disabled by default, you can enable and test it out. Firefox 99 is expected release on April,05. Lets us hope the feature makes it into the stable version.
More about Firefox:
Firefox 96 is arriving today, here is what’s new
Mozilla Firefox gets Windows 11 Style Scrollbars
Firefox 95 launches RLBox Sandboxing and Site isolation features
Firefox disables & blocks FVD Speed Dial add-on for intercepting user search queries
