Hover zoom that shows the original.
Thumbnails are resized copies. Hold Alt over one and Bellevue shows the original beside the cursor; tap Ctrl to open it full-screen. Works on almost any site.
Three keys, three distances
Hold Alt to glance
Hold Alt (Option on a Mac) over an image and the original appears beside the cursor, following it across the image. It appears once the original has loaded, and a small original isn't enlarged. Let go and it's gone.
Photo: Giles Laurent, CC BY-SA 4.0
Tap Ctrl to look closely
Tap Ctrl over an image and the original opens full-screen in Bellevue's viewer. Zoom with the wheel, drag to pan, rotate, and tap Ctrl again to close. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+click and Ctrl+wheel still do what they did.
Tap Shift to keep it
Point at a thumbnail and tap Shift, with or without the popup, and the original opens in a background tab beside the page. Sweep a grid, queue the ones you want, and go through the tabs later.
The file behind the thumbnail
Finds the original
On the sites Bellevue supports, it rewrites the thumbnail's address, reads the page for a link to the original, or asks the site for it. Where there's nothing larger, it shows the image the page loaded.
Photo: Giles Laurent, CC BY-SA 4.0
_Photo_by_Giles_Laurent.jpg){kind=link}
| Page | Width the page loaded | Width in the popup |
|---|---|---|
| Wikimedia Commons | 120, 120, 120 | 7120, 3106, 8640 |
| 236, 235, 235 | 3200, 4096, 3840 | |
| Amazon | 259, 277, 281 | 1828, 2560, 2223 |
Checked signed in on 16 September 2026 (Commons on 21 September), on a Commons gallery, a Pinterest search and an Amazon search, for the first three images in view, in pixels. See all six sites.
One lookup, three ways in
The popup, the Ctrl tap and View image in current tab in the browser's image menu all run the same lookup, so all three open the same original.
Hundreds of sites, tested one by one
Art and photos
- Pixiv
- DeviantArt
- ArtStation
- Flickr
- 500px
- Behance
- Unsplash
Image search
- Google Images
- Bing Images
- DuckDuckGo
- Yandex Images
- Brave Search
- Ecosia
Reference
- Wikimedia Commons
- Fandom
- IMDb
- Goodreads
- Letterboxd
- Spotify
Sites change their pages, so the list changes as they do. Each site on it has its own test, run against the live site.
Hover zoom doesn't reach images inside embedded frames, video, or the browser's own pages. See where it stops.
On a key, or on every hover
Three modes
The popup can show only while you hold the key, on every hover with the key held to keep it away, or never, and every key can be rebound. Holding the key is the default, because a popup at every pause covers the page on the way to a link.
The step-by-step, with measurements: read the hover guide. Zoom, drag panning and the rest of the viewer work on images across the web. See the viewer.
Hover zoom in Bellevue
How is it different from Hover Zoom+ and Imagus?
Imagus left the Chrome Web Store on 31 August 2026. Hover Zoom+ and Imagus Reborn, which carries Imagus's site rules to Chrome, open on plain hover, play videos and page through galleries. Bellevue's popup waits for Alt unless you switch it to every hover, and it shows images only: a video shows its thumbnail, and a gallery its first image. What it adds is the viewer: a Ctrl tap opens the same original full-screen, and on Reddit, X, Pixiv and Fandom the site's own image view becomes Bellevue's. The comparison tests five hover-zoom extensions on the same thumbnails. On Firefox the original Imagus still installs, and the Firefox tests show what works there.
Does it work on every site?
On almost any site, the popup shows the image under the cursor, including grid cells drawn as CSS backgrounds. On the sites Bellevue supports, it shows the original rather than the thumbnail; elsewhere it shows the image the page loaded. It doesn't reach images inside embedded frames, video, or the browser's own pages. See where it stops.
Can I use a key other than Alt?
Yes. In Bellevue's settings, under Hover, each of the three keys can be rebound, and the popup can show on every hover instead, with the key held to keep it away, or never.
Which browsers does it work in?
Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Firefox, each from its own store: the Chrome Web Store, Edge Add-ons and Firefox Add-ons.
Is it free?
Yes, with every feature included and no paid version. If you agree on the page it opens after you install it, Bellevue shares the pages you visit with data partners. The privacy policy has the details.