For many of us, web browsing involves juggling dozens of tabs at once, and it’s easy for important pages to get lost in the chaos. Now, Firefox has introduced something I think could help us multi-taskers: a “Mini Window.” As highlighted by ZDNET’s Jack Wallen, this new Firefox feature works like picture-in-picture overlays for videos—only here, that PiP displays a website.
“[Mini Window] lets you move a tab, or a selected section of a page, into a compact window that stays on top of your other windows while you browse,” runs Mozilla’s official blurb. “It’s useful when you’re multitasking and need to keep a few sources of information in view at once: Reference docs, a chat, a video call, a form you’re filling out.” As such, Mini Window doesn’t necessarily replace running tabs side-by-side; rather, you can prioritize one tab in a full-size window, while keeping another page in view at all times.
This is a feature that’s still in its early stages, and right now you can only get it in the “Nightly” version of Firefox, a very early beta version of the browser. Mozilla says it will push the feature to the full version of the browser later this month.
How to try Mini Window in Firefox right now
Credit: Lifehacker
If you want to try this out as soon as possible, first install Firefox Nightly on your Mac or PC. Once up and running, you can launch Mini Window by right-clicking on a tab header and choosing Move Tab > Move to Mini Window. The tab shrinks and drops down to the lower right corner by default, staying on top of all other windows (not just Firefox). You can then scroll through the page and follow links as normal in the Mini Window—any links set to open in a new tab (manually or automatically) will launch in the main Firefox view, not the window overlay.
By dragging the title bar around, you can put your Mini Window anywhere you want on screen, and you can change its size by dragging the edges of the window too—so it doesn’t necessarily have to be all that “mini.” Firefox hides all buttons by default—including forward, backward, and refresh buttons, together with the address bar and buttons for closing the window or putting it back as a normal tab—though they appear when you hover over the Mini Window.
I’m finding the feature most useful when writing up articles where I need to refer to something else already on the web (so almost all of them), but there are a host of ways this can be used. It’s particularly handy on a small laptop, where you don’t necessarily have the screen space to put two tabs side by side, or when running a lower-priority window (like checking a social media site while reading an important document). No doubt, Firefox will continue to refine and improve the feature as it makes its way to the stable version of the browser, and it feels like something other browsers (looking at you, Google Chrome) might adopt as well in the near future. Eventually, using Mini Windows might become as common as opening up a long row of tabs.
