Frequently asked questions

The basics

What does Ultra Zoom do?

Ultra Zoom shows you the full-size version of an image the moment you hover over its thumbnail — no click, no new tab, no lightbox. It works on image search, social, shopping, real-estate, photography, and news sites, and falls back to generic hover-zoom everywhere else.

Which browsers does Ultra Zoom support?

Chrome, Edge, and Brave through a native Manifest V3 build, and Firefox through a current add-on. There is no Safari build today. Install links for both stores are on the home page.

Is Ultra Zoom free?

Yes. Hover-to-zoom on every site is free forever, with no account and no card, and so are theater mode, reverse image search, gallery navigation, hover history, EXIF, the colour palette, and Lanczos image enhancement. Pro is an optional upgrade for power features — see the full free vs. Pro table.

Do I have to configure anything after installing?

No. Hover an image and it works. Everything after that — overlay size, trigger delay, which sites are active, zoom mode — is optional, and the Help page walks through each one.

Privacy and permissions

Does Ultra Zoom track my browsing?

No. Ultra Zoom sends no telemetry and runs no analytics, on the free tier and on Pro alike. There is no analytics endpoint and no server that receives your browsing history — not because we promise not to look, but because the extension never sends it. Read how the architecture makes it structurally impossible.

Why does it not ask to "read and change all your data on websites you visit"?

Because it does not need to. Free hover-to-zoom sets a full-resolution URL on an image already in the page, which requires no host access at all, so broad access is an optional permission rather than an install-time one. Ultra Zoom asks for it the first time you use a Pro feature that has to read cross-origin pixels — Copy Image, Save Image, or Enhance — and you can decline and keep using everything else.

Does AI upscaling send my images to a server?

No. The Real-ESRGAN model ships inside the extension and runs on your own device through WebGL and ONNX Runtime. No image data leaves the browser, and Enhance works with no network connection at all.

What about the QR code reader?

It decodes the code inside the page. Earlier builds handed the image URL to a hosted decoder; that service was retired, and the replacement runs locally, so the image is never uploaded anywhere. Non-web payloads such as mailto:, Wi-Fi credentials, vCards, and plain text are shown to you rather than navigated to.

What data does Ultra Zoom send if I buy Pro?

Only a licence check: your licence key goes to api.ultrazoom.app to confirm the subscription is active. No browsing history and no page content is included. Payment itself is handled entirely by Stripe — see the Privacy policy.

Using it

Which sites are supported?

Over 70 sites have dedicated plugins that resolve the true full-resolution original rather than a larger thumbnail, including Google Images, Reddit, Instagram, Pinterest, Amazon, eBay, Zillow, Redfin, Flickr, DeviantArt, ArtStation, and Unsplash. Everywhere else, generic hover-zoom still works. Browse the full catalogue.

What are the keyboard shortcuts?

Press ? while an image is zoomed to see every binding. The staples: Z for theater mode, arrow keys to walk a gallery, I for EXIF, P for the colour palette, K to toggle the caption strip, Q to read a QR code, and G/T/Y to reverse image search. The Help page lists all of them.

How do I turn Ultra Zoom off on one site?

Open the popup on that site and toggle it off. The choice is remembered per domain, so you can disable it on the one site where it gets in the way and leave it on everywhere else.

A hover shows a crop instead of the whole image. How do I fix that?

Set the zoom mode to Full image. Recent versions default to it — a hover opens on the whole picture, and scrolling zooms deeper from there — but an older install that had pan-and-zoom selected deliberately keeps that choice. See the release note.

What if a site I use is not supported?

Every install gets a community URL-rules pack that updates weekly, so new sites arrive without waiting for a release. Pro adds custom URL rules for teaching Ultra Zoom about a private CDN or an unsupported host yourself — and you can always ask us to add it.

Does hover-zoom slow down my browsing?

It should not. Ultra Zoom loads nothing until you hover, resolves the full-size URL from rules already in the extension rather than by calling out to a server, and skips logos, icons, and images below a size floor so it does not fire where you did not mean it to.

Switching from another extension

Is Ultra Zoom a fork of Hover Zoom or Imagus?

No. It is an independent extension written from scratch in TypeScript for Manifest V3, which is why it runs natively on current Chrome rather than fighting the platform the way the legacy forks have had to. Read about the V3 trap.

Can I bring my Imagus sieve rules across?

Largely, yes. Pro supports custom URL rules, which is where an existing sieve workflow lands, and the community rules pack already covers most of what a typical sieve was doing. There is a migration walkthrough.

How does Ultra Zoom compare to the alternatives?

There is a side-by-side page for each one — Hover Zoom, Hover Zoom Plus, Imagus, Thumbnail Zoom Plus, Mage, Magic Actions, Zoom Page WE, and the browsers’ own built-in zoom. Start here.

Is Ultra Zoom still being developed?

Yes — actively. The current release is v1.1.531, and the running log of what shipped and when is public.

Still stuck?

Setup steps and the full shortcut reference live on the Help page. Anything else — a bug, a site that should be supported, a feature you want — goes to Contact, and we read every message.