Youtube doesnt have PIP button anymore on my account, there is on a guest account

InsaneTitan

There isnt a PIP button for my account but when it tried it on a guest account its available on that

DoctorG

@InsaneTitan Welcome in our Vivaldi Community

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DoctorG

@InsaneTitan Perhaps a extension causing?

And chcek Settings → Webpages → [x ] Picture-in-Picture button

InsaneTitan

@DoctorG i have no extensions and ive checked the pip settings multiple times so thats why im stumped

InsaneTitan

@DoctorG ive been messing around using 2 google accounts and ive figured out that the browser doesnt recognise that im playing a video since when i double right click youtube it comes up with standard controls, on a different google account, when i double right click it comes up with thing such as Loop and then Picture in Picture

DoctorG

@InsaneTitan Google Services pages can cause trouble in stealing forcus. May be thats why your PiP does not appear in Youtube.

InsaneTitan

@DoctorG i dont have any google services pages open

as for the previous comment to show what i mean this is what it looks like when i double right click the video on the account that doesnt have PIP

on the exact same video on a different account it shows this menu after double rightclicking so i am wondering if this is a vivaldi issue or a google issue

DoctorG

@InsaneTitan Pip icon did never appear aoutomatically in fullscreen mode; only in Standard/Theater mode.
If you need it you have to use Vivaldi's context menu on video.

InsaneTitan

@DoctorG it is not on fullscreen mode, the pictures are just enlarged

DoctorG

@InsaneTitan And on other pages the PiP icon work? Had you checked on https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/media/html5-proprietary-media-on-linux/?

InsaneTitan

@DoctorG
as you can see this is the context menu without pip on my main account

as you see here you can see that there is the option for pip when i signed into different account

TiLT

I have this exact same problem. I believe this has been going on for at least a few weeks, though I don't use the PiP option often enough to say this with any great certainty. I do use it though, so I know it used to work.

I have tried the following things:

Restarted the computer and Vivaldi.
Deleting my YouTube-related cookies and hard refreshing the page.
Opening YouTube in an incognito window. I get the PiP option here, but since I'm a YouTube Premium subscriber, this is hardly an option worth pursuing.
Following the link posted above (https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/media/html5-proprietary-media-on-linux/). I see the PiP option on the video there.
Disabling all extensions AND disabling Vivaldi's inbuilt blocking of trackers and ads. I always do a hard refresh after making these changes, and I have also combined this with opening YouTube in new tabs.
Opening YouTube in a separate window. No PiP.
Swapping between Default View, Theater View, and Fullscreen. None of them shows the PiP button.
Closing all tabs that might somehow be related to YouTube and closing all other applications that could theoretically be interferring (such as Chrome and YouTube Music Desktop App).
Switching the PiP toggle in Preferences on and off a few times, with refreshes.

Nothing makes a difference. Keep in mind that, as far as I can tell, this behavior affects YouTube only, no other sites.

I'm all out of ideas and kind of desperate to get this working again. Any advice?

My system is Windows 11 and I'm running the latest version of Vivaldi.

Pathduck

@TiLT Hi - in many cases, disabling extensions requires closing all tabs, a browser restart and a cache clear to be sure any extension code interfering with open pages is gone.

Also note that the PiP toggle option in settings requires a browser restart to trigger (it says on the option).

For me the Pip button shows on YT in a clean profile of 6.1 (not logged in, no blocking), as well as in my regular 6.2 Snapshot profile with uBlock Origin and a couple other extensions enabled.

Check this:

After doing the above disabling of all extensions, clearing cache, closing tabs and restarting the browser.
Open YouTube, open a video
Open Devtools (F12), select Network tab
Make sure Disable Cache is checked
Reload the page with Ctrl+F5
Look for red blocked or failing requests. All should be OK, since you have disabled blocking, and no requests should fail
In the filter field, fill in the text jffbochibkahlbbmanpmndnhmeliecah
The log should show two requests, for config.json and picture-in-picture.css
Click on these requests and make sure they return a 200 OK
If it doesn't or it's failing, this explains why the PiP button is not showing

This long code jffbochibkahlbbmanpmndnhmeliecah is Vivaldi's PiP extension that gets injected into every page. This extension can be seen in vivaldi://system

Open the url:
chrome-extension://jffbochibkahlbbmanpmndnhmeliecah/config.json
And look for Youtube. There should be an entry like this:
{ "host": "youtube.com", "zIndex": "10" }

Also a tip: When testing stuff, instead of spending lots of time trying different things, just test in a clean profile from the the start. Or better, install Vivaldi as a Standalone clean profile for testing. If it works there, you know it something in your profile causing it.
https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/install-update/standalone-version-of-vivaldi/

TiLT

Thank you for the detailed response!

Regarding your comment on restarting after toggling PiP, I obviously did this. Considering my previous post and all the steps I took to debug the problem, following simple instructions in the UI is so basic that I didn't think to even mention it.

Anyway, I followed your instructions to the letter. Thankfully, I'm a software developer and am at least somewhat familiar with the Devtools window. Everything comes out exactly as expected, with no failed requests and the two files showing up with 200 OK using the provided filter string. I still get no PiP on YouTube under these conditions.

I'm slightly tempted to go scorched earth on my profile and delete everything from cookies to session data and anything in between, but there comes a point when the cost is too high for what I'm trying to achieve. I would have to go into something like that with a reasonable cause to believe that it will actually fix things, or I would have to struggle with restoring everything for weeks after for no reason at all.

Edit: I missed the last part of your post on initial reading. I did confirm that PiP works on YouTube in incognito mode, so that semi-confirms that the problem is with my profile somehow.

Pathduck

@TiLT So there's no failed requests in the network log, what about the console, any errors?

Since you're a developer, inspect the page and find the shadow DOM, there should be an injected element from the Vivaldi PiP like this:

<link href="chrome-extension://jffbochibkahlbbmanpmndnhmeliecah/picture-in-picture.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet">
<div class="vivaldi-picture-in-picture-container transparent" style="left: 237px; top: 80px; z-index: 10;">
	<input type="button" class="vivaldi-picture-in-picture-button">
</div>

This is the actual PiP element and style. If this is missing the PiP button will not show. If it's there but the button still doesn't show, try increasing the z-index.

The button of course will only show when hovering the video, but I assume this has been already covered.

If you enable Sync before nuking the profile, at least you'll keep the important stuff like bookmarks, passwords etc. But of course, you run the risk of actually syncing the setting/extension that caused the problem in the first place...

TiLT

So, I did some more inspection of the elements and tried to figure things out, taking my time. In the meantime, I also observed that my work computer, where Vivaldi is not synced with my regular profile, also exhibited the same bug on YouTube. Additionally, I noticed that embedded YouTube videos still had the PiP button like before. It was only when I went to YouTube itself that the button failed to appear. Judging by the page elements on YouTube, the PiP button was only partially present and existed in a vague semi-present state in the upper left corner of the screen, outside the video and without any possibility of being clicked. I was ready to post here about this in great detail, but then...

Today, it just works. YouTube PiP works on my home computer, and it works on my work computer. I have made no changes to either. This leads me to believe that the issue was a genuine bug somewhere, most likely with YouTube itself, though it's also possible that it was caused by Vivaldi somehow. Seeing as disabling extensions made no difference previously, I'm inclined to free those of suspicion.

In any case, all is well that ends well. Picture in Picture is back... for some reason. I'll take it.

Pathduck

@TiLT Good

Might've been a stale cache issue on YouTube. You only mentioned clearing cookies and doing a hard refresh - which should in theory bypass cache but I have seen Vivaldi/Chromium cache some stuff more aggressively, like CSS.

And YouTube is more of an "App" than a regular web page, so it uses all kinds of Web Storage stuff as well, so tricky to troubleshoot properly. Adding to that, it seems to change a lot, and change stuff only for certain users and countries, making troubleshooting even harder.

Agentmc

@TiLT said in Youtube doesnt have PIP button anymore on my account, there is on a guest account:

So, I did some more inspection of the elements and tried to figure things out, taking my time. In the meantime, I also observed that my work computer, where Vivaldi is not synced with my regular profile, also exhibited the same bug on YouTube. Additionally, I noticed that embedded YouTube videos still had the PiP button like before. It was only when I went to YouTube itself that the button failed to appear. Judging by the page elements on YouTube, the PiP button was only partially present and existed in a vague semi-present state in the upper left corner of the screen, outside the video and without any possibility of being clicked.

I have this exact problem (including top-left-invisible location for the button in shadow DOM). The comment above led me to the F12 Application section where with experimenting I see the following:

[Clear Site Data] with all checks selected --> reload (cache irrelevant, see below) --> works (meaning the button shows)
The playback then stops and GDPR window shows:
- The [Accept] + reload is fine
- The [Reject] + reload is fine
- The [Sign In] + reload breaks the button (yes, to summarize: I see no button in Youtube when signed in - but can see it on other sites, including those that iFrame YT)

What does NOT affect the behavior:

Cache (incl. "Disable Cache")
Local/sessionstorage; WebSQL; Indexed DB
Antivirus
Vivaldi's content blocker

K.Wilczynski

Stealing thread a little as I figured out why it is like that for YouTube Music. The media player has media controls layered on top of it as a separate div. The moment I remove it, PIP is available.
To delete: