How is this different from just pressing F?

YouTube's F key uses the browser's real fullscreen mode, which hands your entire display to the video and hides everything else — your tabs, your taskbar, your clock. Windowed Fullscreen only stretches the player inside your existing window. Maximize the window first and it looks nearly identical, except everything else is still there and still clickable.

Press Escape, click the button again, or use the toolbar popup. Escape backs out one layer at a time: browser fullscreen first if it is up, then the side panel, then the mode. Either way the page is restored exactly as it was, right down to your scroll position.

Do the comments still work in the side panel?

Yes. The panel is YouTube's own content, repositioned rather than copied — so liking, subscribing, sorting comments, and loading more comments all behave normally. Closing the panel puts everything back, from its own close button, the player-bar button, or Alt+Shift+D.

What's the difference between cover and scrollable mode?

Cover pins the player to the window and locks page scrolling, so the video is all there is. Scrollable fills the screen the moment you enter but leaves the page scrolling, so the description, comments, and the suggestions rail are one scroll away instead of requiring you to leave the mode. Pick either one per site in the toolbar popup.

How does the picture-in-picture button work?

It pops the video into the browser's own floating window, and pressing it again brings it back. It is an alternative to windowed mode and fullscreen rather than a layer on top of one: entering leaves whichever of those was up, and closing the floating window — from the button, from Back to tab, or by closing the window itself — puts that state back. It is free, and it always will be. Popping a video out is a browser capability, not work of ours.

Seven features, all of them new work introduced with the tier: dragging any docked column to the width you want, the interactive transcript as a dock of its own, saving the current frame at the video's own resolution, custom filename templates for those frames, burning the playback time onto one, ambient glow that lights the letterbox bars from the video's own colours, and custom letterbox palettes — 5 cinema swatches, 6 gradient themes, and a colour picker. $10 once, no subscription, no account.

Is anything that used to be free now behind the paywall?

No, and nothing ever will be. Windowed mode in both cover and scrollable, the comment panel, the live-chat dock, the suggestions rail, per-site auto-apply, copy-link-at-timestamp, picture-in-picture, and idle cursor auto-hide are all free and stay free. Every paid feature arrived with the paid tier.

How do I activate my Pro license?

After purchase you receive a license key. Enter it under Already bought Pro? — either in the toolbar popup's Pro view, or in the prompt that appears in the page when you press a Pro control, so activating a key you bought on another machine never means leaving the video. It activates instantly, with no account.

Can I use my key on multiple computers?

Yes, up to the activation limit. To move your key, press Remove key on the computer you are finished with — in the popup's Pro view — which hands that device's slot back, then activate it on the new one. The key is re-checked roughly once a fortnight, and the check fails open: if it cannot complete, nothing changes and you keep every feature.

Can I change the keyboard shortcuts?

Yes. Alt+Shift+F toggles the mode and Alt+Shift+D docks the comments — Option+Shift on a Mac, where Chrome maps Alt to Option. Visit chrome://extensions/shortcuts to set anything you prefer, clear either one entirely, or bind the frame-capture command, which ships unbound on purpose so it takes no key combination away from anyone who has not bought Pro.

Does it work on sites other than YouTube?

Not yet — YouTube only, and the extension requests access to nothing else. Support for additional video sites is planned.

Does it collect any data?

There are no accounts, no logins, no analytics, no crash reporting, and nothing sold or shared. Your settings and your license key are stored on your own device and never synced. Without a license key the extension makes no network requests at all. With one, it makes exactly one: the key is sent to Dodo Payments, the provider that issued it, to confirm your purchase — when you enter it and roughly once a fortnight after. It goes with an id for this device's activation, which Dodo issued when you entered the key and which carries nothing about your machine. Nothing else goes with them, and there is no server on our side. Saving a frame never leaves your machine.

Official Software Hub · Developed by Rohit Tiger

LIVEProductivityCHROME

Windowed Fullscreen

Name: Windowed Fullscreen
Availability: InStock
Author: Rohit Tiger

Full-window YouTube that doesn't hide your taskbar

Add to Chrome View Pro Plans Back to Extensions

Native fullscreen takes over your whole display, so the moment you need a tab, a message, or the clock, you have to drop out of it. Windowed Fullscreen adds a second viewing mode right next to YouTube's own fullscreen button: the player fills your entire browser window, but the browser Fullscreen API is never called. Your tab strip, taskbar, clock, and notifications all stay exactly where they are. Six controls sit beside YouTube's fullscreen button, and three columns — comments, live chat, and the transcript — dock beside the video rather than covering it, each taking width from the player instead of sitting on top of it. The masthead slides back in whenever you move the cursor to the top edge. Pro adds resizable docks, the transcript column, frame capture at the video's own resolution, ambient glow, and custom letterbox themes.

INTERACTIVE SANDBOX

Try Windowed Fullscreen Live

Fully functional in-memory simulator. Test features in real-time right in your browser.

Windowed Fullscreen SandboxLive Interactive

PREVIEW & INTERFACE

Visual Showcase

CAPABILITIES

Engineered for Workflow Speed

Every capability is designed to enhance productivity without slowing down your browser.

Fills the window, not the display

The player expands to every edge of your browser window using CSS, never the browser's Fullscreen API.

Your taskbar stays put

Tab strip, address bar, clock, and notifications remain visible, so nothing interrupts you to get to them.

Three columns beside the video

Comments, live chat, and the transcript dock beside the player — each taking width from the video, never covering it.

Pop the video out, and back

One press floats the video above every window, and a second brings it home to whatever you were watching in.

Capture the frame you are watching

Save the current frame at the video's own resolution, with no interface in the picture, to your downloads or clipboard.

Resize the docks, light the bars

Drag any docked column to the width you want, and let the letterbox bars glow with the video's own colours.

PRICING & LICENSING

Simple & Fair Pricing

One-time purchase · No recurring subscriptions · 256-bit encrypted checkout via Dodo Payments.

Free

Forever free

Windowed fullscreen on YouTube — cover or scrollable, per site
Comments and description docked beside the video
Live chat docks beside the player on livestreams
Picture-in-picture, in one click
Copy the video link at the current timestamp
Idle cursor auto-hide, and masthead reveal on hover
Button, popup, Alt+Shift+F and Alt+Shift+D
No account, no tracking, no ads

LIFETIME ACCESS

Pro

$10

One-time payment · Lifetime license

Everything in Free — and everything free stays free
Drag the comment, live chat, and transcript columns to any width
Dock the interactive transcript in a column of its own
Save the current frame at the video's own resolution
Custom filename templates: {title}, {channel}, {date}, {time}
Burn the playback time onto a saved frame
Ambient glow: letterbox bars lit from the video's own colours
Custom letterbox colour, 5 cinema swatches and 6 gradient themes
One payment, lifetime licence — no renewal, no account

Get Pro — $10 Once

One-time purchase · No monthly fee

Instant license key delivery via email

Use across multiple browsers & devices

No account or login required

TRANSPARENCY & DATA SAFETY

Permissions & Data Practices

Every permission requested by Windowed Fullscreen is documented here with its exact technical reason.

storageSaves your per-site settings — auto-apply, scrollable mode, the three dock widths, the letterbox colour, ambient glow, idle cursor auto-hide, and the frame-capture options — plus your Pro licence key if you have one, and the local-only bookkeeping behind the rating row. All written to local storage; chrome.storage.sync is deliberately unused, so settings never leave the device.

*://*.youtube.com/*Required to add the six controls to YouTube's player bar, apply the CSS that expands the player and docks the comment, live chat, and transcript columns beside it, read the already-playing video into a canvas so a frame can be saved locally and the ambient glow can sample its edge colours, and read the current tab's address so the toolbar popup can tell you whether the page is supported.

Data collected: None for free use. If you buy Pro, the licence key you enter is stored on your device and sent to Dodo Payments — the payment provider that issued it — to confirm the purchase: once when you enter it, roughly once a fortnight after that, and once more if you remove it. That request carries the key and an id for this device's activation, which Dodo issues when you first enter the key so that one purchase can cover a limited number of devices. The activation id is not a fingerprint: it carries nothing about your machine, and the name this install registers under is a fixed string, identical on every install. Nothing else is ever sent: no account, no email, no page you were on, no video, no browsing history, and no settings. There is no server on our side, so there is nowhere for anything to be kept. Saving a frame is entirely local.
Data sent off device: Yes
Data shared with third parties: Yes

Read full dedicated privacy policy →

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

RELEASE HISTORY

What's changed

v2.0.0Sep 20, 2026Latest
- Pro, $10 once: resizable docks, the transcript dock, frame capture, custom filename templates, burned timestamp, ambient glow, and custom letterbox palettes
- Live chat docks beside the player on a livestream, following YouTube's own chat toggle
- A picture-in-picture button — free, and an alternative to windowed mode rather than a layer on top of it
- Copy the video link at the current timestamp, from the player bar
- The suggestions rail is back in scrollable mode, beside the comments
- Idle cursor auto-hide, on by default and switchable per site
- Six controls in the player bar, up from two
- The settings moved into the toolbar popup; the separate options page is gone
- A close button on the docked comment panel, and Alt+Shift+D to toggle it
- The revealed masthead now ends where a dock begins, so it no longer covers a docked panel's own controls
- A refused license key now says which kind of refusal it was, so a key at its device limit no longer reads as a typo
- Performance: six causes of lag on every watch page fixed, and the injected script is 39% smaller
- Fixed: a protected video reports a blank frame instead of saving black; the transcript docks the moment you press it; saved frames always land on Windows
- One network request, and only with a license key: the key is verified with Dodo Payments. Without a key there are still none
- Removed: the options page, settings backup and restore, and the per-channel rules — favorite channels and channel memory — which could only ever read the previous video's channel
v1.3.0Aug 12, 2026
- Rebuilt settings, popup, and options UI
- A welcome page on install: thanks, one pin instruction, and four usage hints
- A rating row in the settings footer, and a prompt asked once in the extension's whole life
- A permanent feedback link, rather than one gated behind a low score
- A collapsed Tips section showing the keyboard combination the browser actually has registered
- Fixed the chapter title in the player bar doing nothing in windowed mode — it now hands the page back and opens YouTube's Chapters panel
- Fixed the rating prompt destroying itself on sight, and its controls overlapping in the popup
- Fixed synthetic resize events firing at a page the extension no longer owned after an in-app navigation
- Fixed restoring the player's inline layout undoing half of itself
v1.2.0Aug 9, 2026
- Comments button: docks the channel, subscribe, likes, description, and comments into a column beside the player
- Escape now backs out one layer at a time — side panel first, then the mode
- Fixed the side panel rendering as a solid black column on YouTube's light theme
- Fixed the revealed masthead painting behind the player, which made it impossible to click
- Smoother masthead reveal: quicker in than out, so drifting past the top edge no longer snaps it away
- Stopped YouTube's own top-right overlay from swallowing the hover at the top edge
- Fixed the chapter row wrapping its last segment onto a second line, which painted a stray red line under the scrubber
v1.1.0Aug 8, 2026
- Scrollable mode: the video still fills the screen on entry, but the page keeps scrolling to the description and comments
- The masthead is now hidden rather than removed — move the cursor to the top edge and the search bar slides back in
- Per-site mode setting in both the popup and the options page
v1.0.0Aug 2, 2026
- Initial release with YouTube support
- Windowed-fullscreen button beside YouTube's native fullscreen control
- Toolbar popup with status and one-click toggle
- Alt+Shift+F keyboard shortcut, rebindable
- Escape to exit, restoring the page exactly
- Optional per-site auto-apply

Official Windowed Fullscreen Software Landing

This is the verified landing page and official store for Windowed Fullscreen, developed by indie engineer Rohit Tiger. All license keys, downloads, and documentation are directly issued and supported.

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