You open YouTube for the video, not for the interface surrounding it.
Cosy YouTube clears away the visual clutter and gives the player room to breathe. The result is a calmer, more focused way to watch the videos you already love.
Make Space for What You Came to Watch
YouTube’s controls are useful, but they don’t need your attention all the time.
Cosy YouTube expands the video to fill the available space and moves the masthead out of sight. When you need it, simply move your cursor to the top of the screen and it returns.
Nothing important is taken away. It’s just quieter until you need it.
| Without Cosy YouTube | With Cosy YouTube |
|---|---|
 |  |
With Cosy YouTube, you can:
- Give the video more room to breathe
- Hide the masthead until you hover over it
- Turn the cosy view on or off from the extension toolbar
- Keep using the YouTube experience you already know
Why I Made It
I love watching YouTube. I just don’t love the interface competing with whatever I’m trying to watch.
So I spent an afternoon with Claude building a small prototype around a simple idea: watching YouTube should feel like watching the video, not navigating a website.
It started as a personal experiment, but it quickly became something I wanted to keep using.
Initial Tasks
- Establish working prototype
- Enable hovering of masthead to bring back
- Make it work per tab (either enable/disable per tab instance or have it update multiple documents when adding/removing)
- Clean up code (pull styles from css file)
-
Show masthead on non-video pages (specific css selector to find)
Where It’s Going
Honestly, Cosy YouTube works pretty great so far! I have really enjoyed using this for my ambiance and lo-fi viewing. There are a couple of technical issues I want to iron out, but if you’re at all interested, have a go yourself!
Install Cosy YouTube
Cosy YouTube is currently available as a manually installed Chrome extension. It isn’t in the Chrome Web Store yet, so installation takes a few extra steps:
- Download the latest release.
- Unzip it somewhere permanent.
- Open
chrome://extensionsin Chrome. - Enable Developer mode.
- Select Load unpacked and choose the unzipped folder containing
manifest.json. - Open a YouTube video and use the Cosy YouTube toolbar icon to switch it on.
That’s it. Your videos now have a little more space, and a lot less noise.
Cosy YouTube is still an early project, if you have an idea that would make it better, open an issue on GitHub.