YTView is a macOS app that lets you watch YouTube videos in a floating window that stays always on top. Perfect for watching videos while working or using other apps — completely ad-free.
YTView creates a compact, minimalist window that plays YouTube videos without ads or distractions. The window stays on top of all other applications, so you can watch your videos without switching between windows.
- Ad-free playback - Watch YouTube videos without any ads
- Always on top - The window stays visible over all other applications
- Minimalist interface - No distractions, just the video
- Video queue - Add multiple videos to a queue and watch them in sequence
- Chrome extension - Quickly send videos from your browser to YTView
- Keyboard shortcuts - Fast control with global shortcuts
- Remembers last video - The app remembers which video you were watching
The Chrome extension lets you interact with YTView directly from your browser:
- Open in PIP - Click the extension icon on any YouTube video to open it in YTView's floating window
- Add to queue - Hover over any video thumbnail on YouTube and click the "+" button to add it to the queue
- Add playlists - On playlist pages, click "Add all to YTView" to send the entire playlist to your queue
The extension communicates with the desktop app via a local API on port 8765.
YTView includes a built-in video queue so you can line up multiple videos:
- Add videos by URL or paste multiple links at once
- Play all queued videos in sequence
- Remove individual items or clear the entire queue
- Queue is persisted between sessions
- Open the app - On launch, you'll see a field to enter the video
- Enter a video - Paste the full YouTube URL (e.g.,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID) or just the video ID - Confirm - Press Enter or click OK
- Watch - The video loads ad-free and you can watch normally
- Switch video - Click anywhere on the video to open the input field again
- Cmd+Shift+Y: Open or focus the YTView window
- Cmd+Q: Quit the app
- Cmd+W: Close the window
- macOS (Electron-compatible version)
- Node.js (version 18 or higher)
- npm
Go to the Releases page and download the latest .dmg file for macOS. Open the .dmg and drag YTView to your Applications folder.
Note: Since the app is not signed by Apple, macOS may block it on first launch. Go to System Settings > Privacy & Security and click "Open Anyway".
This project uses a monorepo with pnpm workspaces and Turborepo.
pnpm installpnpm turbo run build
cd apps/desktop && npm run electron:devpnpm turbo run build
cd apps/desktop && npm run electron:buildThe .dmg will be generated in apps/desktop/dist/.