A YouTube browser extension built around small daily frictions
PopupX is a made to reduce small annoyances in everyday YouTube use. Double-clicking a video opens it in a separate pop-out player. Alt+S opens a floating YouTube search box, so the current page stays in place while searching.
Minimal mode and music mode make watching or listening cleaner, and specific YouTube screen elements can be hidden. It also includes a tool, custom shortcuts, a custom right-click menu, and many small settings. Building it showed that YouTube is harder to work with than a normal website because it behaves like a .
Pages and videos can change without a full reload, so reliably detecting those changes took more effort than expected. Adding more features can quickly make the product messy, so the product direction stayed focused on making common YouTube tasks faster and less distracting.
Key points
- Double-clicking a YouTube video opens a pop-out player.
- Alt+S opens floating YouTube search without leaving the current page.
- Minimal mode and music mode reduce visual clutter.
- The includes , custom shortcuts, and a custom right-click menu.
- YouTube behaves like a , making page and video change detection harder.