YouTube has been testing the ability to simultaneously watch and browse videos with picture-in-picture (PiP) on the web since March this year and now, a new YouTube Miniplayer for PiP is finally being rolled out for the web in Canada and other parts of the world (via 9to5Google).
We have been seeing the new option since last night with a new Miniplayer icon appearing in the bottom-right of the video window. Clicking the icon shrinks the video to the bottom-right corner with the current play/pause state intact.
If you hover over the minimized video window, you will notice a play button and the ability to jump backward and forwards in a playlist, while the seek bar can be found at the bottom of the video. A close button is available in the upper-right corner. Clicking anywhere on the window will open the full video page, while a right-click brings up a menu of options.
Enabling the Miniplayer will result in YouTube navigating users to their last visited page, be it search results or a channel. If users visited a video directly, activating PiP will take them to the YouTube homepage. The clear intent of this feature is to let you browse while watching a video in a sizable window.
The new YouTube Miniplayer option now appears to be rolling out to quite a few users.
