It’s not only about entertainment; maybe you have some videos that motivate you to work harder and you would like for them to play alongside your work windows. Whatever the reason, if you would like videos to float over your current work windows, you can do so on your Mac using the following guide.
Getting Videos to Float Over Existing Windows
In order to do the task, you are going to use a free app called Helium that acts as a floating browser for you and lets you see whatever you normally see in a browser but in a floating manner. And yes, that does include the videos that you want to see.
Head over to the Helium app page on Github and download and save the app.
Once the app has been downloaded, copy it to the “Applications” folder for it to show up in the Launchpad. When that is done, double-click on the app to launch it.
Since the app has been downloaded from outside the Mac App Store, you will see the following prompt asking if you really want to open the app. Click on “Open.”
When the app launches, click on the “Location” menu on the top and choose one of the following options: Open Web URL … – Select this option if you would like to play an online video such as a YouTube video. Open File … – Select this option if you would like to select a local video file on your Mac to be played. In the following example I have chosen the Web URL option, as I would like to play a YouTube video.
Helium will then ask you to input the video URL. Then click the button that says “Load.”
As soon as you click the button in the above step, the app should begin playing the video and will float all over your current open windows. Whether you move to your Chrome window or open your Excel spreadsheet, you will still see the video being played. You can resize the video to match your needs. Maybe you want the video to cover half of your screen’s real estate, or maybe you would just like the video to cover a small area in one of the corners of your screen. Set it to whatever size you want.
Conclusion
Should you ever wish to watch a video while you work with other windows on your Mac, you can use the above app to get that done.
