Google’s custom tabs are an ingenious way to handle in-app links on Android, giving you access to your cookies and preferences on websites all without kicking you straight toChrome. The concept of custom tabs has been largely unchanged over the past few years, with nothing but some minor improvements. The latest tweak is more fundamental, though. Using Android’s picture-in-picture mode, custom tabs can now stay active in the background.
To achieve this, Google has added a new chevron icon next to the x button in the top left, accessible in all apps that use custom tabs. When you hit the new button, the custom tab collapses into a small floating pane with the website’s icon, title, and domain visible. You can move the floating panel around your screen freely and even resize it. You can close the tab by dragging it down to the bottom of your screen. In other words, the floating custom tabs behave exactly like the mini video player many video streaming apps use, which makes sense given that they both use the same underlying Android feature.
The new picture-in-picture mode makes it possible to switch back and forth between the app you opened the custom tab in and the tab itself. On social media, this could allow you to post about the link you’re looking at while quickly being able to reference it. Of course, it’s always been possible to do something like it by hitting the overflow button on a custom tab and selecting theOpen in Chrome browsershortcut, which seamlessly moves over the website into a regular Chrome tab. Being able to do this with a single tap and without being forced to open yet another tab in your browser is definitely an improvement, though.
Chrome has been working on picture-in-picture mode for a while
The company started testing floating custom tabs late last year
Googlefirst started testing picture-in-picturewithChrome Canary 121late last year. WithChrome 122, the company has now begun rolling it out more widely. Given the nature of Google’s slow feature rollouts, it may take some time to reach your phone if you don’t have it yet. You can force it to appear by turning on thechrome://flags/#cct-minimizedflag and restarting your browser.
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