Open YouTube Videos in PopUp Window with a Bookmark

TL;DR Follow these steps to add a bookmark to your browser that opens YouTube videos in a popup window.

Aside from my laptop, I use two monitors. This allows my to “multitask” which is fancy talk for having something running/playing in the background while I’m actually working. Sometimes the thing that is running in the background is a YouTube video. This is great with music videos and long videos that don’t need my full attention. However, I find it annoying to have the YouTube page or video fill the entire screen. What I need is a small window with just the video. I don’t really need the comments, suggestions, header, etc.

The embed HTML is the key here. You can right-click on the video and directly copy the embed code. It looks like this:

Embed code has a lot of options that you can view in the help section.
This embed code is of an iFrame that opens a YouTube page at a certain URL. YouTube would actually take care of removing all of the extra stuff that I don’t need.
Browser bookmarks can run a JavaScript function which would open a popup window of a YouTube page with just this video.

The JavaScript function looks at the active browser tab and picks up the unique ID of the video before constructing the embed URL and opening a new browser window with that URL. To avoid a predictable problem, the function will make sure that you’re on a YouTube page before it opens the popup window. If not, it will display an error message.

How to Add This to My Browser

1. Copy this code:
   
2. Open your browser’s Bookmark window.
3. Create a new bookmark, and give it a name. Say: Popup YouTube Video.
4. In the location, paste the code listed above.
5. You’re all done.