One of the big new features in macOS Sierra is the new iPad-inspired Picture-in-Picture mode for Safari. This allows users to detach a video from its player so that it’s always viewable across desktops and while using other apps.
Although YouTube’s player doesn’t make it readily apparent that its videos work with Picture-in-Picture, it’s quite easy to enable the handy feature for all of your favorite YouTube videos on Safari.
How to enable Picture-in-Picture for YouTube videos
Step 1: Right click on the YouTube video that you wish to detach
Step 2: Once the menu appears, right-click once more to reveal a second menu and then click Enter Picture-in-Picture
The video will now detach, and you’ll be able to enjoy watching it using Picture-in-Picture mode.
As we showcased in our hands-on macOS walkthrough, Picture-in-Picture allows you to dock your video in one of the screen’s four corners, lets you resize video, and lets you lend an “always on top” property to the video, even across multiple desktops.
Hopefully YouTube will be updated to make it easier to enable Picture in Picture mode for all of its videos, but even if it isn’t, it’s very easy to do so with just a couple of right-clicks.
Keep in mind that Picture in Picture mode is Safari-only for the time being, and you must be running the macOS Sierra beta to utilize the feature. Special thanks to redditor LeafOfTheWorldTree for the handy tip.
