Netnewswire: Feature Request: Picture in Picture

[dillonjohnbrown]

I would love the ability for NetNewsWire to use macOS's native picture-in-picture mode.

[brentsimmons]

For… playing videos? Or…?

[dillonjohnbrown]

Yeah. I use NetNewsWire to subscribe to YouTube and other video creators. This feature would save me a couple clicks from opening the video in Safari, then opening it in picture-in-picture.

[Wevah]

Unfortunately the WKWebView properties to allow PiP and fullscreen are private API, which would most likely get us a finger-wag from App Store review. ☹️

[Wevah]

That said, it seems pretty trivial to do, otherwise, at least as far as simply making the proper context menu items work.

[eivindml-solvr]

This would be really cool, if that also means that YouTube videos can be played in full screen as well. I have moved all my YouTube subscriptions to NNW, and deleted my account. Would be nice with some better ergonomics for playing YouTube videos.

[marcoskirsch]

It’s annoying not to be able to make embedded videos (YouTube and others) full screen because “Fullscreen is not supported on your browser”.
See screenshot: PiP from Safari in the corner but the embedded video from NetNewsWire cannot be full screen.
Should this be a separate Issue?

[vincode-io]

As @Wevah mentions above, we can’t implement this without using private API’s. We don’t use private because they aren’t supported and can break at any time. Private API also isn’t allowed in apps in the App Store.

We’ll leave this issue open in case Apple supplies us with a technology to make this happen. Unfortunately, it just isn’t possible right now.

[Wevah]

It looks like at least as of Safari 13.1 WebKit now supports the standard requestPictureInPicture() API.

Also, since (IIRC) it was decided that the Mac version won't be put in the App Store, it might be worth looking at the private API again, if only so the "Enter Picture in Picture" context menu item works.