Sticky Videos vs. Picture-in-Picture: What’s Actually Following You (and How to Stop It)

ByPriya Nair

The video isn’t using your browser’s PiP — it’s the website

If a video follows you as you scroll down a page, that’s not your browser’s Picture-in-Picture feature doing it. It’s the website itself. Web developers use a CSS technique — typically position: fixed combined with a scroll event listener — to pin their player to a corner of the viewport once you scroll past it. Your browser’s PiP has no awareness of scrolling at all. That’s why disabling every PiP-related flag in brave://flags changed nothing: you were targeting the wrong mechanism entirely.

The two problems look identical on screen but have completely different causes. They need different fixes.

What browser PiP actually does

The browser’s native Picture-in-Picture pops a video into a small floating window that stays visible across your open tabs. It fires either by a deliberate user action — clicking the PiP button on the player — or, since Chrome 142, by a browser-initiated trigger when you switch away from a tab with audible video playing. It will never activate because you scrolled.

Chrome 142 introduced browser-initiated automatic PiP. When conditions are met — audible video, sufficient site engagement history, no existing PiP window open — and you switch tabs, the browser may move the video to a floating window. The first time a site does this, Chrome shows a permission dialog. You can revoke that permission at any time.

Turning off auto-PiP for a specific site

  • Click the lock icon in the address bar while on that site
  • Select Site settings
  • Find Automatic picture-in-picture and set it to Block

In Brave you can also reach per-site controls through brave://settings/content. There is no single global toggle to block auto-PiP everywhere at once — permissions have to be managed site by site, either by revoking them after the dialog appears or by setting them proactively in settings.

Fixing website sticky video players

This is the problem most people actually have. The solution is uBlock Origin with the right filter list.

The Web Annoyances Ultralist, maintained on GitHub by yourduskquibbles, is a filter list built for uBlock Origin’s extended CSS syntax. It specifically targets floating videos, sticky headers, social bars, cookie banners, and other screen-blocking elements across a wide range of sites. Adding it takes about a minute.

Adding the Web Annoyances Ultralist to uBlock Origin

  • Open uBlock Origin’s dashboard (click the extension icon, then the gear icon)
  • Go to the Filter Lists tab
  • Scroll to Custom at the bottom and click Import
  • Paste this URL: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances/master/ultralist.txt
  • Click Apply changes, then reload the page

On most sites the floating player disappears or stops following you on scroll. The list is actively maintained, so new sticky player patterns get added over time.

When a site still isn’t covered

Use uBlock Origin’s element picker. Right-click the floating video, choose Block element, confirm the selector in the picker dialog, and uBlock writes a CSS rule scoped to that site. Done in under a minute, and it survives page reloads.

uBlock Origin in Brave vs Chrome — a key difference

Brave still supports the full Manifest V2 version of uBlock Origin, which means extended CSS cosmetic filtering works without restriction. That’s exactly what the Web Annoyances Ultralist depends on. Chrome has completed its Manifest V3 migration, so Chrome users get uBlock Origin Lite — a reduced version with limited cosmetic filter support. If you’re on Brave, you’re in a better position here. If you’re on Chrome and this matters to you, Firefox retains full MV2 support and uBlock Origin runs at full capability there.

Which problem are you actually dealing with?

  • Video follows you while scrolling on the same page — website sticky player — fix with uBlock Origin and Web Annoyances Ultralist
  • Video pops into a floating window when you switch tabs — browser-initiated PiP — revoke the auto-PiP permission in Site Settings
  • A PiP button appears on the video player — standard user-triggered PiP, only activates if you click it

Sources


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