Opera browser will automatically pop-out videos when you switch to a different tab

The Opera 83 update is being rolled out to users in the stable channel. This version introduces a new feature called, automatic video pop-out, aka picture-in-picture mode.

It is a useful option to have, we have seen other browsers support this natively, including Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Vivaldi.

Automatic video pop-out in Opera browser

In June 2021, Opera rolled out the R5 update, which brought a feature called video conferencing pop out. It switches the video from normal view, to a compact picture-in-picture mode for some services like Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, etc. The new automatic video pop-out in Opera 83 is similar to the conferencing feature, except that the former automatically toggles PiP mode for any video that is currently being played.

Let's say you're watching a video on YouTube, but switch to a different tab, the video will be displayed on top of the new tab in a mini-panel. The PiP window has some playback controls to pause/play, control the volume, close the panel. It is a floating window that you can resize, or move around the screen per your requirements.

Switching to the tab which contains the media, e.g. the original YouTube page, will automatically toggle the normal video mode. Jump to a different tab and it pops-out again. That's pretty neat. Users who don't like the automatic video pop-out option can toggle it from the Opera browser settings. Additionally, the page allows you to enable a transparent version of the pop-out player, which can be handy if you like to read the text on a page behind the panel. There are no controls to set the transparency level manually.

The new feature isn't perfect, as the video pop-out seems to stop working if you close the panel or go back to the source page to pause/resume the media, and switch to a different tab. In this particular scenario, the pop-out does not appear even when you reload the tab. So you will have to either manually trigger the pop-out, or close the tab and open the same video in a new tab.  That's a little annoying, but not a dealbreaker. In my tests, the video pop-out only worked with YouTube, I tried it with Amazon Prime, Steam, Twitter, Dailymotion, but none of these videos triggered the option automatically. The pop-out works with these services if you click the button manually, so it's definitely an issue with the new feature.

Meme Generator

The Snapshot tool in Opera browser now allows you to create memes. To access the option, open the snapshot tool, capture a screenshot, and click on the Meme button on the toolbar. Use it to add some text above and below the image, optionally set the text color, font type, and you can troll the internet with a custom meme. You may save the image locally or copy it to the clipboard. The release notes for the new version are available at the announcement post.

The Opera 83 update is based on Chromium 97, which, as you may have read, disables the option to delete the default search engines from the pre-configured list, all Chromium-based browsers except Vivaldi are affected by the change. The offline installer of Opera for Windows, Linux, macOS can be downloaded from the official site.

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