video2webxr

A Chromium extension that plays web videos in your PC VR headset through WebXR, using https://threejs.org/

• YouTube: 360°, VR180 and 3D videos, via a cardboard icon in the player
• Other sites: any non-DRM video, via the extension's toolbar button

Install

1. Install a Chromium based browser - Chrome, Edge, Brave etc.
2. Download video2webxr-<version>.zip from the latest release and unzip it to a folder
3. Open the extensions page in the browser and enable developer mode
4. Click "Load Unpacked" and choose the folder

Usage

1. Turn VR on first (e.g. start SteamVR)
2. Start a new browser so that it detects the hardware

On YouTube

1. Open a 360° or VR180 video, e.g. on https://www.youtube.com/vr/
2. Click on the white cardboard icon in the bottom right hand corner of the video
3. Pick the video's projection in the dropdown next to the "Enter VR" button
4. Click on the "Enter VR" button below the video

On other sites

1. Start playing the video

2. Click the video2webxr button in the browser toolbar (pin it from the extensions menu)

3. A panel with "Enter VR", the projection dropdown and "Close" appears at the top of the page; it defaults to 180° 3D side by side

   

4. Click "Enter VR"; click the toolbar button again or "Close" to stop

Projections

Projection	Use it for
360° EAC (YouTube default)	360° videos on YouTube - this is how YouTube serves them on desktop
360° EAC 3D	3D 360° videos served as stereo EAC
360° cubemap	videos in a plain 3x2 cubemap layout
360° equirectangular	360° videos served as a single equirectangular image (2:1)
360° 3D top/bottom, side by side	3D equirectangular 360° videos
180°	VR180 videos on YouTube, and other mono 180° videos
180° 3D side by side (other sites' default)	3D 180° videos with both eyes side by side, the most common VR video format
Flat screen	normal videos, shown on a virtual screen in front of you

You can switch the projection while in VR. If the image looks jumbled into squares, try a 360° EAC option; if it looks stretched or doubled, try the others.

Limitations

• DRM-protected videos (Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ etc.) can't be shown: the browser won't hand protected frames to WebGL
• Videos served from another domain without CORS headers can't be read by WebGL either; the extension tells you when that's the case
• On other sites the toolbar button can only reach videos in the page itself and in same-site frames
• The Steam Frame's built-in browser doesn't work with it yet; see saphid/chromium-webxr-steam-frame for a community workaround

Troubleshooting

If "Enter VR" says "VR NOT SUPPORTED", the browser hasn't found your headset:

• Make sure SteamVR is running and the headset is connected
• Set "WebXR runtime" to OpenXR at chrome://flags/#webxr-runtime and restart the browser

If you don't see the white cardboard icon in the bottom right hand corner of a YouTube video then the extension is not installed or disabled

Development

Sources are in src/: youtube.js (YouTube integration), generic.js (toolbar button on other sites), vr-player.js (the shared WebXR player) and background.js (the service worker).

npm install
npm run build   # builds the extension into dist/
npm run watch   # unminified with source maps, rebuilt on change

Load dist/ unpacked in the browser. npm run check lints and checks formatting with Biome, and npm run fix applies fixes; CI fails on either.

Commit messages follow Conventional Commits: feat:, fix:, perf:, refactor:, docs:, build:, ci:, style:, chore:, test:, optionally with a scope (feat(youtube): ...). Release notes are generated from them with git-cliff; npm run changelog previews the notes for unreleased commits.

Releasing

Bump version in manifest.json and package.json, commit (chore: release 2.1.0), then push a matching tag: git tag v2.1.0 && git push origin v2.1.0. GitHub Actions builds the zip and publishes the release with the generated notes.

Credits

• Based on EnableYoutubePCVR by feedthedogs (ISC)
• Cardboard icon from Tabler Icons (MIT)
• Rendering by three.js (MIT)