Document picture-in-picture

Category: Miscellaneous
Type: New or changed feature
Status: Enabled by default (Chrome 116)
Intent stage: Prepare to ship

Summary

Document Picture-in-Picture adds a new API to open an always-on-top window that can be populated with arbitrary HTMLElements. This is an expansion upon the existing HTMLVideoElement API that only allows for an HTMLVideoElement to be put into a PiP window. This allows web developers to provide a better PiP experience to users.

Motivation

There currently exists a Web API for putting an HTMLVideoElement into a Picture-in-Picture window (videoElement.requestPictureInPicture()). If a website wants to have something as simple as custom media controls icons or as complex as a full scrollable playlist in the PiP window, they can’t currently provide it in the existing HTMLVideoElement experience. We want to expand upon that functionality by giving websites the ability to open a picture-in-picture (i.e., always-on-top) window with a blank document that can be populated with arbitrary HTMLElements instead of only a single HTMLVideoElement.

Standards & signals

Specification: https://wicg.github.io/document-picture-in-picture
Firefox: Positive
Safari: No signal — no official position, but have some concerns
Web developers: Positive — In addition to the linked comment, we have some signals from partners that this would be valuable, and are checking to see if they are OK making that public
Tracking bug: https://crbug.com/1315351

Explainers: https://github.com/WICG/document-picture-in-picture/blob/main/README.md

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