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Enable Picture-in-Picture (PIP) for Global Media Controls in Edge

How to Enable Picture-in-Picture mode (PIP) for Microsoft Edge Global Media Controls

The Global Media Controls feature in Microsoft Edge Chromium now includes the Picture-in-Picture button, allows you to go to PiP mode much faster. The change is available in Edge Canary starting in build 82.0.442.0. Here's how to activate it.

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Global Media Controls

Microsoft is working on an enhanced version of the 'Global Media Controls' feature for their newest Chromium-based Edge that allows controlling all active media sessions in the browser from a single flyout.

Microsoft is actually trying to improve the existing functionality of Chrome. Recently Google has started working on the 'Global Media Controls' feature. Chrome includes an experimental feature that shows a popup that is similar to the one that appears when you press multimedia keys on your keyboard. As of now, it handles the active media session only. Microsoft's implementation lists all the media sessions running in the browser, and allows you to pause or continue running them. So, if you have multiple tabs in the browser that play sounds, like YouTube, Spotify, and Vimeo, you can manage their playback from a single flyout. You can easily play, pause, and skip media content available on any web page.

Picture-in-Picture mode

Picture-in-Picture mode opens videos that play in the web browser in a small overlay window which can be managed separately from the browser's window. Most of the modern web browsers support this mode, including Chrome, Vivaldi, Opera, and Firefox.

Edge PiP In Action For Global Media Controls

With the latest Canary update, Microsoft Edge now shows a dedicated button in the Global Media Controls flyout to open the media stream in PiP mode. By default, the button is hidden, but it is easy to enable it.

To Enable Picture-in-Picture mode (PIP) for Microsoft Edge Global Media Controls,

  1. Open Microsoft Edge.
  2. Type the following in the address bar: edge://flags/#global-media-controls.Edge Enable Global Media Controls Flag
  3. Select Enabled from the drop-down menu next to the Global Media Controls option.
  4. Now, type edge://flags/#global-media-controls-picture-in-picture in the address bar.
  5. Enable the flag Global Media Controls Picture-in-Picture.Edge Enable PiP Button For Global Media Controls
  6. Click on the restart button to relaunch the browser.

You are done.

Now, open any YouTube video and click on the media button in the toolbar. You should see a new PiP button that opens a dedicated video flyout for the video that remains always on top of other windows until you close it.Edge PiP Button For Global Media Controls

Edge PiP In Action For Global Media Controls 2

Edge PiP In Action For Global Media Controls


The stable version of Microsoft Edge Chromium is available to the public for a while. The browser has already received a few updates, with support for ARM64 devices in Edge Stable 80. Also, Microsoft Edge is still supporting a number of aging Windows versions, including Windows 7, which has recently reached its end of support. Check out Windows Versions Supported by Microsoft Edge Chromium. Finally, interested users can download MSI installers for deployment and customization.

For pre-release versions, Microsoft is currently using three channels to deliver updates to Edge Insiders. The Canary channel receives updates daily (except Saturday and Sunday), the Dev channel is getting updates weekly, and the Beta channel is updated every 6 weeks. Microsoft is going to support Edge Chromium on Windows 7, 8.1 and 10, alongside macOS, Linux (coming in the future) and mobile apps on iOS and Android.

Also check:

Microsoft Edge Roadmap: History Sync This Summer, Linux Support


Actual Edge versions

The actual versions of Edge Chromium at the moment of this writing are as follows:

You will find many Edge tricks and features covered in the following post:

Hands-on with the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge

Also, see the following updates.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

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