Pip Cue terms & YouTube learning concepts

Picture-in-Picture (PiP) is a browser feature that floats a video in a small, always-on-top window so it stays visible while you use other tabs or applications. Modern Chrome supports two flavours: legacy Video PiP (the bare floating window) and Document Picture-in-Picture (a richer floating window that can render any HTML). Pip Cue uses both: Standard PiP for one-click universal floating and Cinematic PiP for the richer experience.

→ Cinematic PiP feature page

Document Picture-in-Picture is a Chrome API (available from Chrome 116+) that lets a web page render full HTML — buttons, scrub bars, subtitles, anything — inside a floating, always-on-top window. It is the foundation that lets Pip Cue's Cinematic PiP show speed controls, captions, and the A-B loop UI inside the floating window itself.

→ Cinematic PiP feature page

Standard PiP is Pip Cue's one-click mode that uses Chrome's native requestPictureInPicture() API on any HTML5 video. It works on every site that allows PiP — YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch, Coursera, embedded players. Triggered by Alt+Shift+P or the toolbar icon. Best when you just want the video floating with no extra controls.

→ See all three modes

Cinematic PiP is Pip Cue's custom floating video window for YouTube. Unlike a bare floating window, it includes a scrub bar, skip ±10s, six playback speeds (0.25x to 2x), captions overlay, A-B loop, and a Save button — all inside the floating window itself. Triggered by Alt+Shift+M.

→ Cinematic PiP feature page

Captions Only is a Pip Cue mode that floats a small subtitle-only window over your other work while the YouTube tab continues to play audio in the background. There is no video — just the live captions. Useful for podcasts, lectures, and long talks that you want to read alongside rather than watch. Triggered by Alt+Shift+C.

→ Captions Only feature page

An A-B loop is a playback feature that repeats a defined segment of a video — from a start point (A) to an end point (B) — indefinitely. Pip Cue's A-B loop lives inside Cinematic PiP on YouTube: press [ to set A, ] to set B. Combined with the speed picker (0.25x to 2x, with pitch preserved), it's the core tool for drilling dance routines, guitar solos, language phrases, or any short skill from YouTube.

→ A-B loop feature page

Auto-PiP is an opt-in Pip Cue setting that automatically pops the current video into picture-in-picture whenever you switch browser tabs, so the audio and visuals follow you instead of pausing or being hidden. Turned off by default; users opt in from the popup, the options page, or the right-click context menu.

→ For multitaskers

The Pip Cue transcript sidebar is a panel mounted into YouTube's right column showing every caption line of the current video. It supports click-to-seek (tap any line to jump there), lyrics-style auto-scroll, search, copy-current-line, and one-tap translation to 100+ languages via YouTube's own translation backend. Opens from a red Transcript icon Pip Cue adds next to YouTube's Save button.

→ Transcript feature page

The timedtext endpoint is YouTube's public caption-track API, used internally by the YouTube player to fetch subtitle data. Pip Cue calls the same endpoint directly to render the transcript sidebar — including translated transcripts (appended with &tlang=<language code>). All caption data lives only in the active browser tab; Pip Cue never uploads, stores, or logs transcript content.

→ Privacy policy

Send to NotebookLM is a one-click Pip Cue action available on every saved bookmark in the dashboard. It opens NotebookLM (Google's AI notebook product), creates or opens a notebook, and auto-fills the YouTube URL with your exact timestamp into the Add-source dialog. The only data Pip Cue sends is the YouTube URL you already saved.

→ NotebookLM feature page

NotebookLM is a research and study notebook product by Google that lets users add sources (PDFs, websites, YouTube videos) and then chat with, summarize, or generate study materials from them. Pip Cue's Send-to-NotebookLM action automates inserting a saved YouTube URL — with timestamp — into a NotebookLM notebook's Add-source flow.

→ Send to NotebookLM

Save to Watch is Pip Cue's bookmark feature on YouTube. A red Save button appears next to YouTube's Like and Share buttons; one click stores the video URL, title, thumbnail, and the exact second you stopped. The first 20 bookmarks are free and kept locally in chrome.storage.local; optional Google sign-in syncs them across devices.

→ For students

Lyrics-style auto-scroll is a transcript-sidebar feature in Pip Cue: as the video plays, the panel automatically scrolls to keep the currently-spoken line highlighted and in view — the same pattern song-lyrics apps use. The scroll happens only inside the transcript container, not on the YouTube page itself.

→ Transcript feature page

Comprehensible input is a language-acquisition concept (associated with linguist Stephen Krashen) describing learning material that is just slightly above the learner's current level — understandable enough to follow but new enough to grow vocabulary. YouTube is one of the largest sources of comprehensible input ever made; Pip Cue's transcript + translation + A-B loop turn any YouTube video into a comprehensible-input session in your target language.

→ For language learners

Cross-device sync is the optional feature where signing in to Pip Cue with Google replicates your saved bookmarks across every Chrome browser you sign in on. Bookmarks are stored in Supabase against your email; the extension reads them back via a session token kept in chrome.storage.local. Without sign-in, Pip Cue is fully local-first — no data leaves your machine.

→ Free tier and Pro waitlist

Preserves-pitch playback is a property of the HTML5 <video> element that changes playback speed without altering pitch — so a song played at 0.5x stays in the original key, only slower. Pip Cue's speed controls and A-B loop both use preserves-pitch playback, which is why slowing a guitar solo or a vocal phrase still sounds natural.

→ A-B loop feature page