Despite the small physical profile of mobile phones, multitasking has surprisingly become more accessible than ever. Android continues to test and addnew featuresto the platform that make it easier for users to juggle multiple things at once. Features likesplit screen modeand the newdrag-and-drop functionalityintroduced in Android 14 continue to show Google’s focus on adding new multitasking tricks. One of my favorite multitasking tools is picture-in-picture, and Chrome is starting to open this awesome feature up to other apps.
There is no worse feeling than realizing that your lunch is over in a few minutes, but you are only halfway through that YouTube video you’ve been waiting to watch all day. What’s the harm in wrapping up that video before getting back to responding to emails? Luckily, you don’t have to make that decision, because Android has picture-in-picture for this specific reason. Well, maybe not forthatparticular reason, but it is there to help us multitask.
While PiP in general has been a boon for Android users since its introduction with 8.0 Oreo, apps that use Chrome Custom Tabs to render web pages haven’t been able to take advantage of this feature. Now, Twitter user and Google apps aficionado,@AssembleDebug,highlightedthat Chrome has added a button that lets you quickly minimize Chrome Custom Tabs into a floating picture-in-picture window.
First reportedby browser expert@Leopeva64, the feature was added to Chrome Canary 121 for Android back in October. It has since made its way to the stable version of Chrome (120 as of this writing), but is hidden behind a flag and disabled by default. To activate the feature, you will need to enable thecct-minimizedoption. The picture-in-picture minimization is limited to Chrome Custom Tabs (CCTs), but the flag is accessible in the mainChrome browser flags menu.
Chrome Custom Tabs are an alternative to Android’s built-in system WebView that third-party developers can use when they need to render web pages and don’t want to build an entire browser into their app’s code. While both WebView and Chrome Custom Tabs can accomplish this, only the latter offers Chrome sync features like saved passwords and bookmarks, improving the user experience in third-party apps. The latest benefit of CCTs is that Android users can minimize in-app browser tabs using picture-in-picture.
Chrome already has functionality that minimizes tabs into a floating PiP window, but this feature makes it more accessible. It was previously limited to users watching full-screen videos, and they could minimize the video to picture-in-picture by navigating to the home screen. This new feature allows users to minimize in-app CCTs, though it doesn’t minimize text-based web pages into a very functional view. Rather than having a mini-video floating around your screen, it is a small window with the site title and URL that can be tapped to bring you back to the web page.
The percentage of website traffic from mobile devices continues to rise year after year, and there are no signs of this trend shifting in the near future. Chrome continues to dominate the mobile browsing markets, and it is in large part because of continued improvements to the platform. This new feature enables app developers to handle in-app web browsing more efficiently and unlocks new creative possibilities.
