Crossfade Desk for YouTube Music

True-overlap crossfade with fade fallback, transport controls, and a live signal inspector for music.youtube.com.

Crossfade Desk removes the silence between songs on YouTube Music. Instead of one track ending and the next starting cold, the outgoing song fades down while the incoming one rises to meet it. No gap, no dead air — just a continuous mix, the way a good playlist should feel. WHY THIS EXISTS YouTube Music has no crossfade setting. It plays every track through a single player and swaps the source at the boundary, which is why there is always a small hole between songs. This extension closes that hole two different ways, and lets you pick which one you want. TWO MODES Volume fade The outgoing track eases down before the boundary and the incoming track eases back up. Works on every single track, never fails, no setup. If you just want the gap gone, this is all you need. True overlap (experimental) This one actually overlaps the two songs. The extension reads your queue, loads the upcoming track in a second hidden player, and rides one up as the other comes down — a real crossfade, with both songs audible at once, the way DJ software does it. When a track cannot be pre-loaded, it falls back to a volume fade automatically for that transition. You never get silence as a failure mode. PLAYER CONTROLS IN YOUR TOOLBAR Play, pause, skip forward, skip back, scrub, and volume — all from the extension popup. Album art, track title, and artist are right there. Change songs without hunting for the YouTube Music tab among everything else you have open. The popup also shows what is playing next, with a live status: standing by, loading, overlapping, handing off. You always know what the extension is about to do. TUNE IT TO YOUR EARS - Crossfade length, 1 to 12 seconds - Fade-in time after the handover - Dip floor — how far the outgoing track drops before the switch - Handover level — a one-time calibration if the two players sit at slightly different loudness Everything applies instantly while music is playing, so you can adjust by ear rather than guessing. Settings sync across your machines if you are signed into Chrome. THE SIGNAL INSPECTOR Most extensions are a black box. This one is not. A second tab in the popup shows live gain meters for both audio sources, the current transition phase, the upcoming track ID, and a timestamped event log of every decision the extension makes — which method found your next track, whether the second player started, how the timing worked out, and exactly why it fell back to a fade when it did. If something sounds wrong, the log tells you what happened. You can copy it out in one click. Built for people who like knowing how their tools work. RECOMMENDED WITH YOUTUBE PREMIUM True overlap mode works best with a YouTube Premium subscription. The second player runs in its own context, so without Premium it can hit an ad while pre-loading the next track. When that happens the overlap is interrupted and the extension falls back to a volume fade. With Premium, the pre-load is clean and overlaps land properly. Volume fade mode has no such issue and works identically with or without Premium. If you are not a subscriber, use volume fade and everything works exactly as described. HONEST LIMITATIONS Worth knowing before you install: - True overlap is experimental. Some tracks have embedding disabled by the rights holder and cannot be pre-loaded; those transitions use a volume fade instead. This is logged, not hidden. - Radio and autoplay queues are generated as you listen, so the upcoming track occasionally changes after pre-loading has begun. The extension detects this and recovers, but that transition will not overlap. - Volume fade mode is the reliable one. If you want something that simply always works, use it. - Works on music.youtube.com only, not regular YouTube. PRIVACY No accounts. No tracking. No analytics. No external servers. Nothing leaves your browser. The extension runs only on music.youtube.com and reads only what it needs to time a crossfade: what is playing, how far along it is, and what comes next. Your settings are stored in Chrome's own sync storage. That is the entire data footprint. GETTING STARTED Install, open music.youtube.com, and play something. Crossfading is on by default at a six second blend. Click the toolbar icon to adjust the length, switch modes, or watch the transitions happen in the inspector. Start with volume fade to hear the difference, then try true overlap once you know what you are listening for.