YouTube picture in picture on your Mac, under the notch

Updated 29 September 2026.

A tutorial in one window and the work in another. A talk you want to finish while you answer email. The video only needs a small corner of your attention, but on a Mac it either takes over a window or floats over the thing you are trying to do.

FloatPill moves a YouTube video from your browser into a card under the MacBook notch, at the top centre of the screen, where no window ever goes. This page explains how it works, what it cannot do, and when the picture in picture already built into your browser is the better choice.

What your Mac can already do

Picture in picture exists on the Mac, and it is free:

• Safari: right-click the YouTube video twice and choose Enter Picture in Picture, or click and hold the sound icon in the address bar.
• Chrome: right-click the video twice and choose Picture in picture, or use the media controls button in the toolbar.
• YouTube’s miniplayer keeps the video small in a corner, but only while you stay in the YouTube tab.

The floating window works with almost any site. What it does not do is know about your tab: the tab keeps its own copy of the video, and the window lands in a corner, over whatever is there.

How it works in the notch

• Play a YouTube video in Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi or Arc.
• Open the notch, go to the media module and press Watch in the notch. Or simply switch to another app: while a video is playing, the notch offers to take it with you, in a small pill you can accept or dismiss.
• It picks up at the same second. The browser tab pauses as the notch starts, so nothing plays twice.

What makes it different from a floating window

• It sits under the notch, in the one strip of the screen no app uses, instead of over the corner of your document.
• As big as you want it. Drag the bottom-right corner: it stays 16:9, from small to about half the width of a laptop screen, and it remembers the size.
• One sound at a time. If the browser is still playing, the notch starts muted and takes the sound the moment the browser goes quiet. You never hear both.
• Back to the browser whenever you like. The tab resumes where the notch got to, not where you left it.
• It stays when another app goes full screen, like a picture in picture window would, and it does not vanish when your pointer passes over it.

The first time

To find the video you are watching, FloatPill reads the address of your browser’s YouTube tabs. macOS asks you once whether to allow it (System Settings › Privacy & Security › Automation). The question appears when you press the button, never in the background, and the notch tells you what it is waiting for while it is on screen.

One optional switch makes it exact. In the browser’s developer menu, turn on Allow JavaScript from Apple Events. With it, FloatPill pauses the right tab directly, starts from its exact second and, when you go back, moves the tab to where the notch got to without reloading the page. Without it, everything still works through the system’s media controls, with the muting rule above as the guarantee.

What it cannot do

• Only YouTube. Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and other DRM-protected services have no player that can be embedded, and never will. Twitch and Vimeo are not supported either.
• Not Firefox. It does not let other apps see its tabs, so there is no way to find the video.
• Some videos refuse. A few owners switch off embedding; the notch then says the video cannot be opened here, and it stays in the browser.
• The picture takes a few seconds. YouTube’s player needs a moment to start. Nothing is skipped: it resumes from the second the browser had reached.
• Ads are YouTube’s business. The notch uses YouTube’s official embedded player, the same one websites use, and YouTube decides what it shows.

Privacy

No Screen Recording permission: the notch plays the video itself, it does not film your screen. Tab addresses are read on your Mac, only when you ask for a video, and nothing is sent to us. The video streams from YouTube as it would on any page that embeds it. The detail is in the privacy policy.

FloatPill or your browser’s picture in picture?

This page is on our site, so the conflict of interest first. The built-in one is the better pick when:

• The video is not on YouTube, or you watch it in Firefox.
• You want it free, and a window in a corner does not bother you.

And FloatPill is, when:

• You want the corners of your screen for your work, not for a video.
• You go back and forth between the notch and the tab, and want each to pick up where the other stopped.
• You would use the rest of the notch anyway: file tray, clipboard history that refuses passwords, calendar, focus timer, voice memos with transcripts, Spotify and Apple Music controls, and your Claude and Codex usage limits. The video comes with them, for €14.99 once.

Requirements

macOS 14 or later, on any Mac: on a MacBook the card sits under the notch, on a Mac without one the app draws a notch of the same size at the top of the screen. Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Seven days free with no account, no email and no card, then €14.99 once.

Try FloatPill, 7 days free See it on the home page

YouTube is a trademark of Google. FloatPill is not affiliated with Google. More guides: Mac notch apps compared · Claude usage limits on Mac.