Picture in Picture (PIP) Not Working on Xfinity Stream


Description of the issue:
How can this issue be reproduced?

  1. Download PIP Extension

  2. Navigate to https://www.xfinity.com/stream/listings

  3. Select channel to watch and click on the PIP icon

Expected result: I would expect the PIP mode to be enabled

**Brave Version( check About Brave):**Brave is up to date
Brave 1.83.120 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Chromium: 141.0.7390.122

Additional Information: PIP works on other sites; Xfinity Stream seems to be the only problem. However, PIP works on Xfinity Stream with no issues using Firefox.

This is working for me on macOS – can you tell me what OS you’re using when you see this issue? Also, what specifically happens when you click the PIP button? Nothing at all?

Sorry, I should have included that. Windows 11 25H2.

Hmmm works for me in Win 11 as well. I’m wondering if it is something contained within your browser profile that is causing this issue. Would you be willing to test and see if PIP works for the site in a Guest window? To do this:

  1. Launch Brave, click Main menu --> More tools --> Guest profile
  2. Once the Guest profile window opens, close your original profile window (so only the guest profile window is open)
  3. Login to Xfinity, stream content a click the mini-player/PIP button

Let me know if you get the same results.

The mini-player does work on both my profile and the guest profile but it’s limited as it can’t be resized or moved around.

My issue in Brave is with the Automatic Picture-In-Picture extension that pops out a smaller version of the video that you can resize. Unfortunately you can’t download the extension in the Guest profile so I can’t test it there.

When I use PIP in Firefox I can resize and the player stays on top when I move from tab to tab so I can take the video with me as I do other things.

When I use the extension in Brave, it works everywhere except with the Xfinity Stream site.

It’s important when reporting issues that you include detailed information about the issue you’re seeing. Saying that PIP “didn’t work” to me meant that it wasn’t launching at all. This changes the troubleshooting process.

With that in mind, you are referencing a PIP “extension” – to clarify, are you referring to an actual extension? That is, one you downloaded from and installed from the chrome web store? If so, can you please tell me what specific extension you’re using?

I did state as the #1 step, to download the extension. I neglected to state it was a Google extension. Here is a screenshot from Manage Extensions in Brave.

Thanks,

Kathy

@Mattches when I tested the Picture-in-picture option doesn’t appear in Brave’s media controls or anything. It’s just their own mini player.

This is something we’ve seen in the past and is because of how they have things coded for the website.

If you delete it, where you can see I completely removed the "disablepictureinpicture` line:
image

Then it works

@Kathy similarly to what I shared above, extensions might be restricted by that as well.

I think it’s been said that Firefox does tend to ignore this and allows for Picture-in-picture regardless. But Chromium browsers generally don’t.

Yeah so I just tested this in Chrome and Firefox.

In Chrome, you get the same behavior as in you do in Brave using the built-in PIP option for the video player. They both appear [too] small and cannot be resized. I installed Picture-in-Picture extension (by google) in Brave and Chrome and this does not seem to work. Clicking on the extension to launch the video in PIP mode doesn’t do anything.

Testing in Firefox, there is no Picture-in-Picture extension (by google) add-on since it is a Chrome/Chromium specific extension. Looking at the Firefox add-ons, they don’t have many general PIP extensions - most of them are site/function specific. The Enable Picture-in-Picture add-on for Firefox makes it so that any video can be viewed in a PIP player. However, it has no UI and did not make a difference when I tried to enable PIP in Firefox for Xfinity.

So this appears to be a more generalized conflict with the way the video player code implemented by Xfinity as @Saoiray pointed out above, rather than an issue specific to Brave. @Kathy whatever add-on you’re using in Firefox to start launch the Xfinity video in PIP is getting around this restriction/conflict which is why it’s working for you. Out of curiosity, can you tell me what the name of the add-on in Firefox that lets you resize the PIP player is called?

Unfortunately I don’t know if there is a whole lot that can be done here, given that this behavior is the same across most browsers (I just tested in Edge as well just to be sure and got the same behavior as Chrome and Brave) and OS. I can reach out to some team members and see if it’s possible for us to inject our own code into sites like this to allow for it to be launched in the proper PIP player but I don’t know how feasible that is.

Thank you for looking into this. I think what I’m hearing is that what I’m looking for in Brave is not possible.

@Kathy not quite. It’s saying that the reason there’s the limitation is because the website is coded to try to prevent it. The browser is naturally honoring the website rules. This is mainly inherited by Chromium code upstream, which is the code of the browser.

To get it to work, Brave would have to add new code or rules to the browser to ignore the website’s code and try to get things to work.

The reply from Mattches which just barely came before you submitted yours is touching on this as well. It’s something they can relay to the team and investigate. If it’s a particular extension/add-on and not Firefox’s natural PiP then he’s saying to share which extension/add-on is helping so they might be able to use it for inspiration on what needs done to get it to work flawlessly.

In the meanwhile, to get it to work in Brave you would have to go into Dev Tools and remove the disablepictureinpicture argument like I showed. This would have to be done each time you visit. But it would get it to work.

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Thanks for the additional info. In Firefox, I’m not using an extension as it is built in.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-picture-picture-firefox

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Thank you for the information. I will bring this up to the appropriate team members to investigate.

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Thanks for the workaround but I obviously don’t know what I’m doing because it did not work for me. I was able to locate two instances of ‘disablepictureinpicture’ and deleted both but no luck. That’s okay, I’ll survive. :slightly_smiling_face:

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@Kathy I tried to do a small recording to kind of walk through it, for what it’s worth. Hopefully it’s able to help you. As I said, this is more of a workaround until something can be done within the browser itself. It’s a little nuisance but is fairly simple once you figure it out the first time overall.

-NOTE-

Since I did do one small action I didn’t voice, I figured I’d mention. When I double clicked and saw it turn into the text cursor but hadn’t highlighted everything, I then did Ctrl+A to select all. That’s where the whole section then was highlighted. Then I hit the del button to delete and followed with Enter.

Just mentioning in case any confusion or difference if you tried to replicate and maybe missed one of the steps since I didn’t audibly say it all.

I guess the steps all in text would be:

  1. Right click video
  2. Click Inspect
  3. Press Ctrl+F to activate Find
  4. Type in Picture and it should jump to or highlight what you’re looking for, which is disablepictureinpicture
  5. Double click on disablepictureinpicture="true" and it should highlight some or all of it
  6. Hit Ctrl+A if the whole line of disablepictureinpicture="true" doesn’t get selected, to which point it should be highlighted
  7. Hit Del and it should be just a blank space now
  8. Hit Enter so it saves
  9. And now it should work until it loads to new video(s) or you refresh the page.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you! That was so nice to put that how to video together.

Your instructions were very clear and I was able to get it to work.

I think I ended up doing a click at the beginning of the section to be deleted and a shift + click on the end to get it all but I keep the double click + Ctrl A in mind for for the next time.

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