YouTube Lyrics Overlay

About

Shows synced lyrics directly over YouTube videos with real-time highlighting. Lightweight, zero-friction, and works out of the box.

YouTube Lyrics Overlay brings a clean, distraction-free lyrics experience to YouTube. While many tools attempt to solve the same problem, they often bundle lyrics into cluttered sidebars, require account signups, or load slow browser extensions bogged down by permissions and permissions prompts.

This extension does one thing and does it well — it shows you synced lyrics right over your YouTube video, automatically highlighting the line that matches the music as it plays. No accounts, no popups, no distractions.

How it works
Open any YouTube video, and the extension automatically detects the artist and song title. Lyrics are fetched from LRCLIB, one of the most comprehensive freely available lyrics databases. The overlay appears instantly over the video player, and the current lyric line lights up as the music plays. The line auto-scrolls so you always stay centered on what's being sung.

Features
Real-time highlighting — the current lyric line is highlighted and auto-scrolled as the video plays
Manual timestamp offset — adjust lyric timing if the version you're watching has an intro/outro that offsets sync
Fully draggable & resizable — drag the overlay anywhere on the video, resize it to your preference
Persistent settings — your panel size, position, opacity, and font scale are saved between sessions
Clean collapsible toolbar — all controls tucked away in a single toggle button so lyrics always take center stage
YouTube SPA navigation — supports navigation between videos without reloading the page
Lightweight & fast — runs as a minimal service worker, loads instantly, no bloat
Permissions
youtube.com — detects the playing video and reads its metadata (title and channel)
lrclib.net — fetches synced lyrics for the detected video
storage — saves your overlay preferences locally

What this extension is not
This is not a karaoke tool, a song identification service, or a full music player. It works best for users who already know what they're listening to and simply want to follow along with the lyrics as they watch.