Some time ago a function known as PiP or Picture-in-Picture became famous. It is that the videos can be detached from an application and kept floating on the screen of our device, which can be a mobile, a tablet, a computer or a Smart TV. Currently, Firefox does not offer this possibility as if, for example, Safari on macOS does, but since in Linux we have everything we can do with other software, as is the case with Pennywise.
The name of this little program comes from the clown in Stephen King's play "It." The dancing clown takes the children to his lair, where he leaves them floating. And that is precisely what it does with the videos: leave them floating on the screen of our PC, with the size we choose and in the position where we want it to be. And, as we will explain later, its use could not be easier.
Pennywise is a simple video service player
To install Pennywise we just have to go to your download web page and let's download the option that best suits our needs. There are several versions, but the ones that will most interest Ubunlog readers will be the AppImage or the .deb package. The simplest is the package created for Debian-based operating systems, that is, a .deb package that we can open directly with our software center and install it from it.
And how is Pennywise used? Well simply we paste the URL of the video in question in the text box and press Enter. At that time, the video will start to play. What we will see is what we have above these lines: it is basically the same as what we see on the different web pages that have embedded videos. From that window we can control the video, as well as access the share menu to, for example, open the video on YouTube.
Pennywise has options for, for example, change the opacity of the window and to video. It also has keyboard shortcuts that will make it easier for us to control all the action of the videos we are watching. You have all the more detailed options in this link. Will you float the videos on your PC screen like the dancing clown does with children in IT?
