Ambient light for YouTube

Ambient light for YouTube is a browser extension that adds ambient light to YouTube videos, without a light strip or a smart light.

The listing keeps it in the browser

The Chrome Web Store description says there is no need for extra hardware such as light strips or smart lights, and that the effect stays in the browser. The privacy policy says the extension only runs on tabs that start with https://www.youtube.com, and that the ambient light effect only activates on YouTube's /watch page.

The screenshot in the project README is Auliʻi Cravalho singing "How Far I'll Go," with the settings panel open. On that image, blur reads 52.6 percent and spread reads 95.7 percent.

The tip at the top of the listing

The same Chrome description includes this tip: on a widescreen or portrait monitor, enable both "Remove black bars" and "Fill video to screen" to fill the monitor with a video that has black bars. The feature list under that tip names the related controls.

• Remove bars, remove sidebars, also remove colored bars, and fill video to screen.
• Bar detection offset, bar detection average, manual bar size, manual sidebar size, and reset bars on the next video.
• View modes listed: small, theater, and fullscreen. Picture-in-Picture is a separate switch. There is also an on/off control.
• Directions are listed as top, right, bottom, and left.

The same list also names page-content controls: shadows on elements, opacity for buttons, boxes, and images, hide elements in theater mode, a translucent header, and hide scrollbar. Video lines on the list are size (scale/zoom) and shadow. Filter lines are brightness, contrast, vibrance, and saturation.

Names on the ambient-light list

Under ambient light, the listing names blur, spread, and fade-in duration. The advanced lines are edge size, fade-out start, fade-out curve, debanding (noise/dithering), flicker reduction, and smooth motion (frame blending).

Under quality, the listing names a framerate limit, resolution, and synchronization to the display framerate or the video framerate. It names a WebGL renderer and notes that it uses less power, plus "Save energy on static videos." Stats lines are framerate, frametime, resolution and draw time, and bar detection. The listing also says settings can be imported or exported to a file or to cloud storage.

The performance line

The Chrome listing recommends a video card score of at least 1000 on the PassMark G3D Mark. The README gives the same 1000-point line and links to the PassMark video-card list. Below 1000, both say the extension still works, and the YouTube video page is likely to be slow or to stutter. The README's browser table sets Chromium at 80 and Firefox at 74. The reason written in that table is the optional chaining operator.

Crash reports are the only request it sends

The privacy policy says the only requests sent are crash reports, that those reports can be turned off, and that no other request is sent to a web server, website, or API. A report goes to Sentry and is deleted after 30 days. The Chrome listing adds that the reports take the browser's Do Not Track preference into account.

• A report can include the URL and video ID being watched.
• It can include browser version, operating system version, and display capabilities.
• Video player state does not contain the video ID or the title. YouTube layout state does not contain YouTube account data.
• It can also include ambient light state and error information.

Wessel Kroos, and the store pages

GitHub user Wessel Kroos publishes the source at github.com/WesselKroos/youtube-ambilight under the MIT license. When this page was written, the repository showed 213 stars, and the last push time on GitHub was 21 November 2025 UTC. The Chrome Web Store developer name is Wezelkrozum. The listing says this developer has not identified itself as a trader, and that EU consumer rights do not apply to contracts with this developer. The README links Ko-fi and labels that link as a donation.

Chrome, Firefox, and Edge each list version 2.38.17. Chrome's listing was updated on 15 November 2025, is 973 KiB, and lists English. That listing shows 60,000 users and 4.8 from 192 ratings. Firefox Add-ons shows the same version, updated 13 November 2025, with 4,727 users and a rating average of 4.9 from 56 ratings. Edge shows 3,836 active installs and 4.5 from 33 ratings. The README also links an Opera add-on. The "20k downloads" figure there is a badge the author wrote into the README, not a live store count.