One of my favorite things about iOS 9 is picture in picture mode, which keeps a small window of a movie visible on screen at all times. Unfortunately, OS X El Capitan doesn’t have an equivalent: you can watch a movie while multitasking, sure, but it doesn’t stay on top of your window stack no matter what, which is the genius of iOS 9’s interpretation.
I’m hoping OS X 10.12 will address this issue. In the meantime, though, there’s an app that will give OS X iOS 9-style picture in picture mode. And it’s free!
It’s called Helium. You just install the app, open it up, and drag it to where on the screen you want it to go. From there, you can watch videos through any online website – YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Plex, Amazon, you name it – or even open local video files through the app.
Here’s a great video by OS X Daily showing Helium in action:
It even has some cool advanced tricks: for example, you can make your video transparent if you don’t want it totally obscuring any portion of your screen. And the best part is, it works in anything. Even if you’re playing a video game, the video will stay on top, a true picture in picture mode for your Mac, without any windows juggling.
Let’s hope the next version of OS X builds picture in picture mode right into the operating system. In the meantime, download Helium for free here.
Via: OS X Daily
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
10 responses to “How to get iOS 9’s “picture in picture” video mode on your Mac”
No command line needed! The video playing App Movist has had this feature built in for several years. Granted its not browser based, but doesn’t bother me.
Sadly it doesn’t work over Full Screen apps, just in the window cluttered screenshot in the OS X Daily article. In the Mac App Store there is a similar app called HeliumLift which will float over Full Screen apps, but it only plays URLs. It doesn’t have Helium’s ability to play a video already downloaded to your Mac. If only we could get both in one app.
Um, Quicktime has a “float on top” option. Am I missing something?
Yes, it appears you are missing something. According to the article, the app plays “YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Plex, Amazon, you name it.”
Last I checked QuickTime didn’t do that.
I was thinking the same thing…
Writing code while watching Family Guy. Its not productive :)
Makes for the funniest code, though!
Giggity
Remember when Apple showed how we could make a widget?. We would select a part of the webpage and the Mac would make a widget. I would like something like this but for everything. Imagine browsing the web or watching a movie, we would select/box whatever we wanted, quit the app and the Mac would put it in front of the screen. Maybe quicktime could do this easy.
You could just use VLC or iTunes and keep the Window on Top.