Apps & Utilities

Restore YouTube Miniplayer Button

A Manifest V3 content script that restores YouTube's missing miniplayer control and survives YouTube's single-page navigation.

Repository
JavaScriptManifest V3DOM APIs

YouTube moved the miniplayer button out of the player controls and into a less discoverable menu. This extension restores the button to the bottom-right control cluster, where the interaction used to live.

YouTube controls before restoring the miniplayer button
Before: the miniplayer control is absent from the player controls.
YouTube controls after restoring the miniplayer button
After: the extension inserts the miniplayer button back into the right control cluster.

Implementation details

The extension is a small Manifest V3 content script that runs on YouTube pages in the main world. It watches YouTube's single-page app lifecycle through navigation events, a MutationObserver, and a lightweight interval, then inserts the button only when the native control is not visible.

Activating the restored button uses a layered fallback strategy:

  1. Click a native miniplayer button if YouTube has rendered one somewhere else.
  2. Try known player methods such as toggleMiniplayer or enterMiniplayer.
  3. Dispatch the i keyboard shortcut.
  4. As a final fallback, open the player context menu and click the miniplayer menu item.

That makes the extension resilient to YouTube's markup changes while keeping the permission surface small: it only targets YouTube and injects one content script plus CSS.