Firefox Nightly adds support for Picture-in-Picture subtitles

Picture-in-Picture mode is an invaluable feature in browsers, it’s a great way to watch videos in a small window on your monitor or second screen while you’re working on something else. Firefox introduced PiP mode in version 71, which was released in 2019.

Mozilla has added various tweaks to the feature since then. The organization outlined its plan to improve PiP mode in January 2022, with the first of those improvements now hitting the Firefox Nightly channel. The latest version of the browser brings support for an important feature, subtitles.

Subtitles and closed captions are an underrated feature, in my opinion. Not only do they help non-native speakers of a language understand dialogue, they are a must-have option for hearing-impaired people to enjoy storytelling in videos and games.

Here is some context related to the Firefox QoL update that explains how it worked until the new version was released. Videos played in Picture-in-Picture mode in the stable version of the browser do not display subtitles in the panel. Instead, the subtitles are displayed in the video tab, while the media is played in the popup window. That defeats the purpose of the PiP panel, for users who rely on the accessibility feature.

Subtítulos en modo Picture-in-Picture en Firefox Nightly

Let’s see how the update fixes the problem. Open any video in Firefox Nightly and switch to Picture-in-Picture mode by clicking the popup button. It should display the captions right inside the PiP panel. The browser supports subtitles uploaded by the content creator and closed captions automatically generated by streaming services.

I tested the new feature with YouTube, Amazon Prime, Netflix and it worked fine on all three platforms. However, the subtitles did not appear in PiP mode when playing videos on Disney+ Hotstar. That’s quite understandable, as it’s an experimental feature, and Mozilla’s announcement in January mentioned that they were testing video wrapper scripts (which enable this feature) with only 4 streaming services as a starter, this service wasn’t theirs . Hopefully the developers will expand support for more websites in the future, once they have resolved the issues with the current version.

Limitations in Picture-in-Picture mode

There is a minor problem with the player. You can’t change subtitle settings directly from the Picture-in-picture panel in Firefox. Regular users may know that the popup player uses the web player settings, for example to change the resolution or playback speed. Therefore, if you want to change the language or other subtitle options, you will need to set them on the main tab so that the PiP window will reflect the same settings.

Download Firefox Nightly 100.0a1 from the official website and try the feature yourself.

PiP mode combined with uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock offers a great experience while watching YouTube videos while multitasking. That said, I also like Opera’s PiP implementation, the video auto popup is nice and it also has the time seek bar, which Firefox doesn’t have, and could be a useful addition.

I think adding subtitles in Picture-in-Picture mode is a great quality of life upgrade. What do you think?

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