One awesome new feature in iOS 9 is picture-in-picture mode. Picture-in-picture allows you to keep a small window of a video visible on your screen at all times. This way, you can browse other content while enjoying a video. However, OS X El Capitan does not have an equivalent feature. While you can use multiple windows in OS X, there is still no easy way to get the true picture-in-picture effect as iOS 9 - expect for this.

Helium: A Floating Browser Window for OS X

If you want an iOS 9-styled picture-in-picture video on your Mac, you can utilize a free app called Helium. Helium allows you to watch any videos through any online website, such as YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Plex and Amazon in a picture-in-picture window. You can even open local videos files through the app. Simply install the app, open it up and drag it to whatever portion of the screen you want it to go.

Describing what Helium does can be a little tricky, so here is an awesome demo video courtesy of OS X Daily demonstrating Helium.

Other Features of Helium

Helium has some pretty awesome advanced tricks as well. For example, you can make your video transparent if you don’t want to totally obscure a portion of your screen. The best part about Helium is that it works in anything. Watch your favorite movie while playing a video game. The video will stay on top, overlaying the video game like a true picture-in-picture would on your tv without any juggling or maneuvering of multiple open windows.

Here’s to hoping the next OS X brings us picture-in-picture mode. Until then, Helium will do the trick. Feel free to leave us a question or comment in the comments below or reach out to us via Facebook!