The bars fill with the picture
Light read from the edge of the frame right beside each bar, so the image appears to carry on past its own boundary instead of stopping at a hard black line.
Chrome extension
Every video is surrounded by dead black space.VIDEO+ turns it into light.
1
It fills the black bars
Light read from the edge of the picture right beside them, so the image appears to continue past its own frame.
2
It spills a glow onto the page
Out past the player and underneath the site's own menus and comments — never over them.
- 28 sites, not just YouTube
- All three modes, free
- No account, no data collected
Two effects, working together
A widescreen film in a 16:9 window has black bars top and bottom. A vertical clip on a desktop has them down both sides. VIDEO+ does two separate things about it.
The glow spills onto the page
Out past the player and underneath the site's own menus, comments and chat — so the page is lit by what you're watching without anything being covered or washed out.
It reads the video. It doesn't just blur it.
Most ambient extensions take the whole frame, blur it, and stretch it behind the player. VIDEO+ samples the edge of the picture on a 448 × 72 grid and builds the light from that. Three things follow from it.
The light varies along the bar
Blue on the left of frame and orange on the right gives you a bar that is blue on the left and orange on the right — not one muddy average of the two.
It adapts to the content
On a busy, detailed edge the smoothing widens automatically so the bar doesn't flicker into confetti. On flat colour it tightens, so a clean colour stays clean.
It matches whatever is there
A frame washed in blue gives you blue light. Green gives you green. It takes the colour of whatever is on screen like a chameleon rather than approximating it — and when a frame is genuinely black, the bars go black too instead of glowing faint grey the way a naive blur does.
It adapts to shape, too. A fullscreen film, a theatre-mode video, a small windowed player and a vertical Short are four different problems — each one is tuned separately.
What you can turn on
Immersion bars
Fills the black bars around the video with light from the picture, so the image looks like it continues past its own edges. Works on letterbox bars (top and bottom) and pillarbox bars (down the sides).
Page glow
Spills light out past the player and onto the page. It sits underneath the site's own menus, comments and chat, so nothing gets washed out or covered up.
Dim the page
Darkens everything except the video itself, which is left completely untouched. For when the rest of the page is competing with what you're actually trying to watch.
28 sites, not just YouTube
Each one is tuned individually, because a Twitch channel page and a TikTok feed need very different handling.
Video
- YouTube
- Watch, theatre, fullscreen, embeds, live, Shorts
- Twitch
- Channels, VODs, clips — light kept off the chat panel
- Kick
- Channels, VODs, clips
- Vimeo · Dailymotion
- Watch pages and embeds
- Rumble · Odysee · Bilibili
- Watch pages and live
- Niconico · Streamable
- Watch pages
- Nebula · Plex · Internet Archive
- Watch pages
Short-form & social
- TikTok
- For You and every feed, one clip at a time
- Reels, Stories (photo stories too) and the home feed
- Watch, Reels, posted videos, home timeline
- X (Twitter)
- Single posts and the timeline
- Comment pages and the feed
Work & learning
- Loom · Wistia · Vidyard
- Shared recordings
- Coursera · edX · Udemy · Khan Academy
- Course players
- Google Drive · Photos · Dropbox
- Your own uploaded video
Everywhere else. A generic engine handles standard HTML5 players on most other sites automatically — the list above is simply what has been specifically tested and tuned.
In feeds, it waits. On TikTok, Reels and timelines the effect holds off until you stop scrolling, then lights the clip you landed on. Scrolling never drags.
Not supported: Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and other DRM services. No extension can read a single pixel of DRM video — the browser walls it off deliberately. More on that.
You decide where it runs
Short-form clips and home feeds are governed by separate switches, because wanting light on a Reel doesn't mean wanting it on your Instagram timeline.
- Run on doomscroll — covers Shorts, Reels, TikTok and clips. Turn it off and those stay dark; everything else keeps working.
- Run in home feeds — covers the Instagram, Facebook, X and Reddit timelines. A separate switch, so your everyday scrolling can stay plain.
- Fullscreen only — the effect appears only when you go fullscreen, and leaves windowed and theatre view completely alone.
- Battery saver — drops the sampling rate when you're unplugged. On mains power nothing changes.
- Keyboard shortcuts — Alt+V on or off, Alt+S/B/C for the three modes, without opening anything.
Free makes video better. Pro makes it adapt.
Free isn't a trial or a teaser — it's the complete effect, all three calibrated modes, on all 28 sites. Pro is the light that watches what you're watching and moves with it.
Free
€0
Forever. No account.
- Immersion bars — fill the black bars with light from the picture
- Page glow — spill light onto the page, under the site's interface
- Dim the page — darken everything but the video
- All three modes — Subtle, Balanced and Cinema
- All 28 sites plus the generic engine
- Run on doomscroll and Run in home feeds, separately
- Fullscreen only, Battery saver, keyboard shortcuts
Pro PAY ONCE
€4.99
One payment. Not a subscription.
- Everything in Free, plus:
- Auto AI — the light reads the picture and moves with it, live
- Colour lock — cross-fade between scenes instead of every cut
- Tune it yourself — effect, colour and darkness, set anywhere
- Per-site profiles — each site remembers its own
- Every future Pro feature, included
30-day refund, no questions asked.
VIDEO+ PRO · €4.99 once
What you actually get
None of it gates the effect, and none of it gates the three modes — those are free forever. Pro is the difference between light you set and light that responds.
Auto AIPRO
The light stops being a setting and starts being a response. It pulls back on dark scenes so the page doesn't fog over, opens up on bright ones, takes the colour down when a frame goes neon, and slows itself when the action speeds up so the edges never strobe. You set nothing.
Colour lockPRO
A dialogue scene that cuts blue, orange, blue makes the room strobe. Colour lock crosses between scenes deliberately instead of following every cut — the change still registers, it just arrives as a fade.
Tune it yourselfPRO
Three controls — effect, colour and darkness — that let you sit anywhere you like instead of only on the three fixed modes. Each one updates the page as you drag it, so you tune by eye rather than by guessing.
Per-site profilesPRO
Every site remembers its own settings, and the right one loads automatically when you arrive. Cinema on YouTube. Pulled right back on Twitch so the glow never competes with chat. Set each one once.
Pro activates with a license key — paste it into the extension and you're done. No account, no login, and it keeps working offline. Two computers? Paste the same key on both.
Questions
Does it work on Netflix, Disney+ or Prime Video?
No, and no browser extension can. DRM-protected video is rendered in a protected path the browser deliberately walls off — an extension cannot read a single pixel of it. That's a restriction built into Chrome itself, not something I can code around. I'd rather say so here than let you find out after installing.
Will it slow my browser down?
It samples the video a limited number of times per second rather than every frame, pauses completely while you're scrolling a feed, and drops its rate further on battery. The whole extension is about 200 KB and needs no particular graphics hardware — there's no GPU requirement to meet.
What data do you collect?
None. VIDEO+ reads pixels from the video on the page you're already watching, entirely on your own device, to work out what colours to show. Nothing is uploaded, tracked, or sent anywhere. Your settings are stored locally in your browser. There is no account and no sign-in.
What exactly do I get if I pay?
Auto AI, which reads the picture and moves the light with it continuously; colour lock, which cross-fades between scenes instead of following every cut; the three tuning controls, which let you sit anywhere between the fixed modes; and per-site profiles. Plus anything added to Pro later. You do not pay to unlock the effect, or the three modes — those are free on every supported site and always will be.
Is Pro a subscription?
No. One payment, once. No account to create, no login, no renewal. You get a license key, paste it into the extension, and it keeps working offline.
Can I use Pro on more than one computer?
Yes. Paste the same licence key on each one. It's tied to your purchase, not to a single machine.
Which browsers does it work in?
Chrome, and Chromium-based browsers — Edge, Brave, Opera and Arc. It is not available for Firefox or Safari.
My video site isn't in the list. Will it still work?
Often, yes. Beyond the sites with dedicated support there's a generic engine that handles standard HTML5 video players automatically. The listed sites are the ones that have been specifically tested and tuned.
Stop watching videos in a black box
The full effect, free, on 28 sites. About ten seconds to install, and it starts working on the next video you open.
Add to Chrome — Free