How To Easily Watch Hulu, YouTube, And Netflix In Mini View On Windows 10

Windows 10 recently introduced a mini view in the Creators Update. At the moment, this mini view works in the Movies TV app, and also in the Groove app. The mini view allows you to switch to a smaller player in both these apps. This player is then pinned to the top of your screen. You can watch a movie or listen to a song. The mini view isn’t restricted to just Microsoft’s own apps. Any developer can add support for it if they actually want to. Users would no doubt like the features in apps like Netflix but it hasn’t been added yet. Mini View is a free Windows app that fills this requirement. It allows you to watch Hulu, YouTube, and Netflix in mini view.

Compact View is basically a web wrapper app that supports the mini view. You will have to visit the site you want to watch this app and play a video. You would then be able to switch to the mini view.

Watch Netflix In Mini View

Open Compact view. And by default, it will take you to Netflix. Sign in with your account and select something to watch. Click the compact view button in the title bar to switch to the mini view.

The app will switch to the mini view. You can control playback and move the mini player around like you can with the Movies & TV and Groove app.

Watch YouTube And Hulu In Mini View

To watch Hulu and YouTube, or whatever website in mini view, you will need to include it. The process is straightforward however the UI isn’t very intuitive. To visit another website, simply click on the URL bar at the top. Enter the URL for a video you want to watch or simply visit YouTube, or Hulu. Play a video in full screen and afterward switch to the mini view.

Compact View will switch to the mini view.

Limitations

Compact View is a pretty nice app concept. It satisfies a genuine need and the developer has included a couple of well-thought-out features like a dark theme you can easily switch to from the app’s settings. Unfortunately, while the app’s core features works flawlessly, it has its bugs. The developer has also added support for various website containers. You can add them all separately in other not to type the URL each time you want to watch on a different website. Sadly, this feature doesn’t work. You can add different websites however you can’t switch to them. You’re basically stuck entering the URL over and over again. The settings panel is also somewhat buggy to open/close.

Compact View as mentioned before is a web wrapper. It’s a sort of browser that can switch to the mini-view so you can expect to see a couple of UI issues when you visit a site e.g., UI components might overlap each other or render incorrectly. Mini View is a Windows 10 Creators Update feature so the app won’t work on older versions of Windows.