Netflix on a 21:9 monitor, without the black bars

Most wide movies on Netflix come inside a 16:9 frame. On an ultrawide monitor that means black bars on all four sides, and a picture that uses barely half of the screen. Here is how to fill it in Chrome.

A wide movie with black bars on all sides of an ultrawide monitor
Before: a 2.39 movie inside a 16:9 stream on a 3440×1440 screen.
The same movie filling the whole ultrawide monitor
After: UltraFill fills the screen edge to edge.

Why the bars are there

A cinema movie is usually 2.39:1. Netflix sends it in a 16:9 video with the black bars baked into the picture. Your 21:9 monitor then adds its own bars at the sides, because the 16:9 video is narrower than the screen. The result is a small picture in the middle.

How to fill the screen

  1. Add UltraFill to Google Chrome (Windows or macOS) and pin its icon to the toolbar.
  2. Open a movie on Netflix and go full screen.
  3. Hover over the top of the video and click UltraFill. In the Screen tab pick the movie format 2.39 and click Fill the screen.
  4. Prefer to see the whole picture? Try Elastic stretch (PRO): the center stays natural and only the edges are stretched.

Good to know about protected video (DRM)

Netflix protects its video, so the browser does not let any extension look at the frames. That is why the automatic format detection cannot work there and you choose the format once by hand. With PRO, UltraFill remembers it per title. Framing, zoom, color and brightness all work.

Sound tools (dialog boost, night mode, equalizer) need one extra click on protected sites: click the UltraFill icon in the toolbar or press Alt + Shift + U (Option + Shift + U on a Mac). Chrome then shows a small sharing badge on the tab, which is normal.

Add UltraFill to Chrome, it's freeTry the live demo →

UltraFill is an independent extension and is not affiliated with the streaming services mentioned on this page. Service names are used only to describe compatibility.