UltraWideo vs Zoom Video – Which One Should You Use?

What Do These Extensions Do?

Both UltraWideo and Zoom Video – UltraWide Fill remove black bars from videos on ultrawide monitors. Each one resizes the video on the page so it fills your screen on Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, and other sites.

They take different approaches. Zoom Video is a free zoom tool for Chrome and Edge. You pick an aspect ratio preset (16:9, 18:9, 21:9, or 32:9) or Auto, and it zooms the video evenly. UltraWideo is a free extension for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox with four video modes, separate horizontal and vertical scale, pan, and gestures. An optional Pro tier adds per-site settings, Letterbox, Ambient Light, Enhance, and sync.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Store numbers are as of September 2026 (checked September 22, 2026) from each extension's listings: UltraWideo on the Chrome Web Store and Firefox Add-ons, and Zoom Video on the Chrome Web Store and Microsoft Edge Add-ons.

UltraWideo's user count combines 70,000 Chrome Web Store users and 15,572 daily Firefox users. On Edge, UltraWideo installs from its Chrome Web Store listing. Zoom Video's count combines 400,000 Chrome Web Store users and 6,552 Edge Add-ons users. On Edge Add-ons, Zoom Video is rated 3.9 from 56 ratings.

How You Control Them

UltraWideo puts its controls in a normal browser popup. Open it by clicking the UltraWideo icon in the toolbar or pressing Alt + Shift + V (Control + Command + V on a Mac). The popup has three tabs. Settings has the on/off switch and the mode, scale, and pan controls, plus scope, Letterbox, Ambient Light, and Enhance with Pro. Shortcuts lists the keyboard shortcuts and gestures. Preferences sets appearance, accent color, and language. No controls or buttons are added to the sites you visit. Apart from video effects you switch on, such as the Ambient Light glow, UltraWideo only draws a small confirmation pill when a shortcut or gesture changes the mode, scale, or on/off state, and the Letterbox Measure overlay when you use it. You can switch between 41 interface languages inside the popup.

Zoom Video also uses a toolbar popup. It has buttons for 16:9, 18:9, 21:9, and 32:9, plus Auto, Reset, and zoom in/out. Its settings cover Persistent Zoom Mode, the default ratio for the player button, zoom transition speed, and hotkeys. On YouTube, Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, and HBO Max, it also adds a zoom button to the video player's controls, so you can zoom without opening the popup. The store listing is translated into 33 languages, but the popup itself is in English.

Zoom vs. Reshape

Zoom Video only zooms, and it zooms both directions equally. The picture never distorts, but the edges get cropped. Auto sets the zoom from the video's frame size and your monitor's shape. The presets zoom to a fixed ratio, and the +/- buttons adjust it in small steps.

UltraWideo does the same even zoom with its Upscale mode. It also gives you other ways to fill the screen:

• Stretch widens the video to fill the screen without cropping.
• Custom sets horizontal and vertical scale on their own, or keeps them linked.
• Pan moves the video left, right, up, or down to choose which part stays on screen.
• Gestures: Ctrl + scroll wheel or a trackpad or touchscreen pinch cycles modes. Ctrl + Alt + scroll wheel changes scale. Alt + drag pans.

Black Bars Inside the Picture

Some films have black bars built into the video itself, like a 2.39:1 movie delivered inside a 16:9 stream. On an ultrawide monitor, zooming in pushes those bars off the screen. Both extensions can do that manually: Zoom Video with a preset such as 21:9, and UltraWideo with Upscale or Custom.

UltraWideo Letterbox (Pro) goes a step further. It detects the bars in the picture and crops just those, and it works with any mode. Zoom Video's Auto option, which its listing calls automatic aspect ratio detection, sets the zoom from the video's frame size and your screen's shape. That removes the bars caused by the mismatch, but it doesn't look for bars that are part of the picture itself.

On DRM-protected streams such as Netflix, the browser doesn't let extensions read the video's pixels. That means Letterbox can't detect the bars automatically there. Instead, you drag over the top bar with the Measure tool to set the crop. The same browser rule is why UltraWideo turns Ambient Light off on DRM streams. Zooming, stretching, and panning work normally on DRM streams in UltraWideo.

Settings That Stick

Zoom Video stores zoom per browser tab. By default, Persistent Zoom Mode is off, which resets the zoom when the tab loads a new page. Setting it to Session keeps the zoom for that tab.

UltraWideo's free tier saves one global setting that applies on every site. Pro adds per-site and per-page settings, a Mode Manager to hide modes you don't use, and cloud sync that carries your settings between Chrome and Firefox.

Pricing

Zoom Video is free, and its website says it has no ads or upsells.

UltraWideo is free for all four modes (Normal, Upscale, Stretch, Custom), scale and pan, keyboard shortcuts, gestures, one global setting, appearance options, and languages. Pro costs $2.99/month or $29.90/year. It adds per-site and per-page settings, Letterbox, Ambient Light, Enhance, cross-browser cloud sync, and Mode Manager.

What Makes Each One Stand Out

Who Should Pick What?

Pick Zoom Video if you want a free, simple zoom tool on Chrome or Edge, with fixed ratio presets and a zoom button right in the YouTube or Netflix player.

Pick UltraWideo if you want more than zoom: stretch, separate horizontal and vertical scale, pan, gestures, and Firefox support. The free tier includes all four modes. Pro adds per-site settings, Letterbox for bars built into the picture, Ambient Light, Enhance, and sync between browsers.