Mogdho Paul

ProjectsFree for Chrome

ytModify

Makes YouTube nicer to watch: a soft glow around the video, auto pop-out, the quality you want and a bigger player.

Download ytModify

Free · Chrome, Edge and Brave · No account

What ytModify does

A handful of small changes that make YouTube feel better to watch, all in one extension, all set from one little window.

Ambient light
A soft glow around the video that follows its colours, like a TV with lights behind it. It can also hide black bars.
Auto pop-out
When you switch tabs, a playing video floats in a small window in the corner. Come back and it slides back in.
The quality you want
Choose a quality for each view, for example 1080p in full screen, 720p normally and 360p in the mini player.
A nicer look
A bigger player, YouTube’s own font, the Premium logo and coloured highlights when you hover. Pick any colour you like.
Private
No tracking and nothing is sent anywhere.

Add it to Chrome in two minutes

It isn’t in the Chrome Web Store yet, so you add it yourself. It only takes a few clicks.

  1. Download it

    Click the download button. You get one file, ytModify.zip.

  2. Unzip it

    Right-click the file, choose Extract All, then Extract. You get a folder called ytModify.

    Keep this folder. Move it somewhere it can stay, like your Documents folder. Chrome uses it every time it opens, so deleting it removes ytModify.

  3. Open Chrome’s extensions page

    Type chrome://extensions in the address bar and press Enter. Switch on Developer mode at the top right.

    Developer mode only lets you add extensions from a folder on your computer. Nothing else changes.

  4. Add ytModify

    Click Load unpacked and choose the ytModify folder. ytModify appears in the list, switched on and ready.

Using Edge or Brave? It works there too: type edge://extensions or brave://extensions instead. In Edge, Developer mode is in the menu on the left.

Your settings

Click the ytModify icon in Chrome’s toolbar. If you can’t see it, click the puzzle-piece icon at the top right and pin ytModify. Everything is in four tabs, PiP (pop-out), Look, Quality and Ambient, and changes show up straight away.

The four tabs of the ytModify settings window: pop-out, look, quality and ambient light options
The ytModify settings window, one tab at a time

Handy keys

Press these while watching a YouTube video. You can change any of them in the settings.

P
Pops the video out, or back in
G
Turns the glow on or off
B
Hides black bars above and below the video
V
Hides black bars at the sides
H
Stretches the video into the space the bars left

Switching to another app instead of another tab? Press P first. Chrome only pops a video out by itself when you change tabs.

Updating or removing it

Get a new version
Download it again and unzip it into the same ytModify folder, replacing the old files. Then open chrome://extensions and click the round reload arrow on ytModify.
Remove it
Open chrome://extensions, click Remove on ytModify, then delete the ytModify folder.

Get ytModify

Free, for Chrome, Edge and Brave.

Download ytModify

Made by Mogdho Paul. The glow is based on Ambient light for YouTube by Wessel Kroos, and the hover colours on YouTube Deep Dark by RaitaroH. YouTube is a trademark of Google; ytModify isn’t made by Google. Curious how it works? See it on GitHub.

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