Wide Stage Chrome extension for YouTube
YouTube keeps the player in a narrow column next to the recommendations, and fullscreen takes over the whole screen. Wide Stage is a small Chrome extension that fills the browser tab with the player instead.
Press ` on any watch page, or click the new button before the fullscreen button. The sidebar, description, and comments disappear and the video stretches to the size of the tab. It keeps its aspect ratio, so it fills the screen when the shape matches and shows bars when it doesn't.
Under the hood it's one class on the <html> element and a stylesheet that pins the player to the viewport and hides the extra columns.
It's open source on GitHub. Since it isn't on the Chrome Web Store, download the ZIP and load the extracted folder from chrome://extensions with Developer mode on.
Update: Oct 25, 2026
Wide Stage now works in Firefox too. Download the Mozilla-signed .xpi from the latest release and open it in Firefox 140 or newer, and it should work. Chrome users can grab the ready-to-load ZIP from the same page.
Update: Nov 08, 2026
Version 1.2.0 makes the wide view work with the rest of YouTube. Moving the pointer to the top edge brings up YouTube's top bar with the logo, search, and account menu, and it hides again when the pointer moves away.
Pressing Esc goes back to the default view, the same way it does in fullscreen. YouTube's cinema mode button and the t key now leave the wide view and switch the view, instead of changing it hidden behind the player. The fullscreen and wide view buttons in the player also no longer get cut off after leaving the wide view.