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MacOS extension lets you watch Netflix while pretending to work on spreadsheets

Published Sep 22nd, 2016 6:30PM EDT
MacOS Tips and Tricks
Image: Apple

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The end of the week is nearly here. You don’t really want to be stuck in Excel all day. We get it.

Luckily, if you’re running macOS Sierra, a new feature lets websites pop video out to a picture-in-picture view, letting a small version of the video float over other windows. It’s a handy tool if you just want to keep half an eye on a livestream, but unfortunately, it requires video players to enable a picture-in-picture button, and not many have yet.

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That’s why developer Arno Appenzeller has made a free Safari extension that will pop out any HTML5 video from a web page into a PiP image. Most notably, it lets you PiP YouTube and Netflix videos, which sounds like an ideal way to waste your afternoon.

The app is available for download here. Once you’ve downloaded, extracted and run the app, go to Extensions in Safari, and tick the PiP box. From there, a toolbar should appear in Safari which will let you pop out any video from the browser.

For a long time, Windows has been the go-to multitasking software for heavy users, with much better support for split-screen and multi-display work. But now that better window management is part of macOS, and PiP lets you view a video while working on something else, macOS is making a serious play for heavy users. And, of course, office workers who just wanna slack off.

Chris Mills
Chris Mills News Editor

Chris Mills has been a news editor and writer for over 15 years, starting at Future Publishing, Gawker Media, and then BGR. He studied at McGill University in Quebec, Canada.