Sidebar Previews: Hover Any Channel to Watch It Live
The Twitch sidebar shows you who is live, but not what they are doing right now. Sidebar Previews adds a hover preview to every channel in the Twitch, YouTube, and Kick sidebars. Hover a channel name and a live preview pops out next to it. Decide what to click in seconds, not by guessing from the title.
The sidebar shows who is live, not what they are doing
The Twitch, YouTube, and Kick sidebars are great for one thing: knowing which of the people you follow are live right now. They are bad at the next question, which is the one you actually have - which of those streams is worth watching at this second?
The stream titles are usually a meme, the category is often a lie, and the viewer count is a lagging indicator. Sidebar Previews adds a hover-preview to every channel in your sidebar across all three platforms. Hover a channel and a live preview pops out next to it. Move the cursor down the list and the preview switches. You can scan ten live streams in fifteen seconds and only commit to the one that hooked you.
How Sidebar Previews works
Once Sidebar Previews is enabled, hovering any channel in the sidebar pops out a preview window of that stream right next to the channel name. Move the cursor to a different channel and the preview switches. Move the cursor away from the sidebar entirely and the preview closes.
The preview shows the live stream in real time - whatever the streamer is doing right now is what you see in the popup. No reload, no extra request from the streamer's perspective, no view counted. Just a live frame in a small window.
Where it works
On Twitch
Sidebar Previews shows up on every channel listed in the Twitch sidebar - the Followed Channels list, the Recommended Channels list, the search results that drop into the sidebar, and any other channel-list panel Twitch shows there. The preview window pops to the right of the sidebar, away from the rest of the page.
On YouTube
On YouTube, Sidebar Previews handles the live channels that appear in the YouTube left navigation - your subscriptions that are live, recommended live channels, and similar. YouTube does not natively make it easy to see what a live channel is doing without clicking through, so this is one of the bigger workflow wins on YouTube specifically.
On Kick
Kick gets the same treatment on its sidebar - the live channels you follow get hover-previews on the Kick sidebar. Useful for following a specific cluster of streamers across Kick + Twitch (with both extensions enabled) and being able to scan both sidebars without leaving whichever platform you are currently on.
Image preview or video preview - your call
Each platform has a toggle (right under the Sidebar Previews setting in the Previews popup) for Image Preview vs Video Preview. Video is the default - what most people want, the live stream playing in the popup. Image preview shows a static thumbnail of the stream instead.
Why use image mode? Three real reasons: you are on a slow or capped internet connection and do not want previews eating bandwidth; you are on a corporate or restrictive network where auto-playing video is blocked or slow; you are at work and an autoplaying live stream popping out every time you brush the sidebar would be a problem. The toggle is per-platform, so you can run video previews on personal browsers and image previews on work ones.
Hover delay for ultrawide and multi-monitor setups
If you have an ultrawide monitor or a multi-monitor setup, your cursor crosses the sidebar in transit between displays a lot. Without a delay, every transit triggers a preview popup, which gets noisy fast.
Sidebar Previews Hover Delay is a separate toggle in the same settings section that adds a configurable delay (in seconds) before the preview appears. Set it to half a second and a quick cursor transit no longer fires a preview - only deliberate hovers do. Set it to two seconds for an even more conservative trigger.
Preview size and audio control
Two more knobs in the same settings section. The Preview Size slider lets you scale the popup from small (good for ultrawide where you want it out of the way) to large (good for single-monitor use where you actually want to watch the preview). Each platform has its own size setting.
Sidebar Previews are silent by default - hover audio would be a nightmare. If you want sound, the shared Default Audio On sub-toggle in the same settings section enables it across all three Previews hover-preview features (Sidebar, Directory, and Clip) with a volume slider so you can keep the level low.
How to enable it
- Install Previews from the Chrome Web Store, Firefox Add-ons, or Edge Add-ons.
- Click the Previews icon in your browser's toolbar.
- In the settings panel for each platform you use (Twitch, YouTube, Kick), find Sidebar Previews. Toggle it on for each.
- Optional: switch the Image / Video Preview toggle to your preferred mode (Video is the default).
- Optional: drag the Preview Size slider to your preferred popup size.
- Optional: turn on Sidebar Previews Hover Delay if you have an ultrawide or multi-monitor setup, and set the seconds to your taste.
- Open any Twitch, YouTube, or Kick page. Hover any channel in the sidebar. The preview will pop out.
What else Previews can do for you
Sidebar Previews is one of three hover-preview features in Previews, and most users enable all three. They cover different parts of the same browsing workflow:
- Directory Previews - hover preview for streams in the browse/category GRID pages on Twitch and Kick. Different from this feature, which handles the SIDEBAR.
- Twitch Clip Previews - hover preview for CLIPS instead of live streams. Browse a streamer's clips section without opening every clip page.
- Sidebar Favorites - pin your top streamers to the top of the sidebar so the people you actually want to preview are always at the top.
- Multi-Stream & Multi-Chat - once you have hovered, picked, and committed to two streams, watch them side by side instead of switching tabs.
- Plus picture-in-picture, fast-forward to live, voice typing, FlashBang Defender, the clip downloader, predictions sniper, and more.
Frequently asked questions
How do I see a live preview of a Twitch streamer without clicking on them?
Install Previews and enable Sidebar Previews in the Twitch settings panel. After that, hovering any channel in the Twitch sidebar pops out a live video preview right next to the channel name. Move the cursor to another channel and the preview switches. No clicks, no page changes, no view counted on the streamer's end.
Where in the sidebar does this work?
Every channel-list panel the platform shows in the sidebar: the Followed Channels list, Recommended Channels, search results that drop into the sidebar, and similar. If a channel name appears in the sidebar, you can hover-preview it with this feature on.
Does this work on Kick and YouTube?
Yes - Sidebar Previews has its own toggle for each platform in Previews settings, so you can enable it on Twitch, YouTube, Kick, or any combination. Each platform also has its own image / video mode toggle and preview size slider, so you can run different settings on different platforms (for example, video preview on Twitch and image preview on the work platform).
Can I switch between image and video preview modes?
Yes. Each platform has its own Image / Video toggle right under the main Sidebar Previews setting. Video is the default - the live stream plays in the popup. Image mode shows a static thumbnail instead, useful if you are on a slow connection, on a restrictive work network, or anywhere autoplaying video would be awkward.
How is this different from Directory Previews and Clip Previews?
Three different parts of the same browsing workflow. Sidebar Previews (this feature) handles the channel list in the SIDEBAR on Twitch + YouTube + Kick. Directory Previews handles the browse/category GRID pages on Twitch + Kick. Clip Previews handles CLIP thumbnails on Twitch only. Most users enable all three - they cover different surfaces.
Can I make the preview appear less aggressively?
Yes - turn on Sidebar Previews Hover Delay in the same settings section. It adds a configurable delay (in seconds) before the preview appears on hover, so a cursor that just transits across the sidebar (common on ultrawides and multi-monitor setups) does not trigger a popup - only a deliberate hover does. Set the delay to half a second to start, and tune up or down from there.