9 Best WordPress Lightbox Plugins (Gallery, Video, & Image)

Do you want to enhance your WordPress website’s visual appeal and create an engaging visitor experience? Look no further, as we have compiled a list of the best WordPress Lightbox plugins.

The WordPress ecosystem offers plenty of lightbox plugins, each designed to simplify integrating this dynamic feature into your website.

A Lightbox WordPress plugin is a useful tool designed to showcase images, videos, and other media content in an overlay on the current page, dimming the background to grab the viewers’ attention.

Benefits of a Lightbox Plugin

Lightbox WordPress plugins enhance the visual presentation of media on your website, improving user engagement and experience. Here’s a detailed explanation of the advantages you can have after adding a lightbox plugin for WordPress.

Focused Viewing: By dimming the background and highlighting the media, lightboxes provide a distraction-free viewing experience. Again, users can view the media content without navigating away from the current webpage.
Professional Look: Lightbox plugins enhance the visual appeal of media content, giving your website a more polished and professional look.
Increased User Interaction: Interactive features like zooming, panning, and captions keep users engaged with your content for longer.
Reduced Bounce Rate: Lightboxes can help reduce bounce rates and increase the time users spend on your site by providing an engaging way to view media content.

Must-Have Lightbox Features

Now, let’s learn some of the key features that should enhance the power of your lightbox and the overall user experience of your website.

Image Overlays: Display images in an overlay that centers the image and dims the rest of the page.
Video Support: Support for displaying videos from platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, or self-hosted videos in a lightbox.
Next/Previous Navigation: Easily navigate multiple images or videos in a gallery using the next and previous buttons. Keyboard control support should be there as well.
Responsive Layout: Automatically resize images and videos to fit within the screen dimensions.
Styling Options: Customize the appearance of the lightbox, including borders, overlays, captions, and navigation buttons to match your website’s design.
Zoom and Pan: Allow users to zoom in and pan around images for a closer look at details.
Lazy Loading: Load media content only when needed, improving page load times and performance.

Whether you aim to showcase a stunning image gallery, present compelling videos, or elevate your content’s visual impact, a Lightbox plugin is the solution you’re seeking.

Best WordPress Lightbox Plugins

Now, let’s check out the list that will provide invaluable insights to make an informed decision and elevate your website.

Now, let’s check for more details about these lightbox plugins below.

Responsive Lightbox & Gallery

Responsive Lightbox & Gallery is the most-rated lightbox plugin in the WordPress repository.

It lets users see a larger/better variant of your photos in an elegant separate window. This plugin is made to fit on any screen device of any size and comes with colossal lightbox designs. 

This lightbox plugin is user-friendly and provides you with settings that allow you to use a lightbox display for all your videos, images, and product galleries from your online store.

If that’s not enough for you, this plugin offers you eight premium extensions/add-ons so that you can have even more flexibility when you customize the lightbox. 

Besides all the available options, you can also customize all other essential aspects like opacity, in/out scrolling, transitions, overlay color, etc. 

Key Features

Eight Different Lightbox Scripts
Alternative WordPress Gallery Links Image Size
Display Single Post Images as a Gallery
Lightbox is available for Galleries, Photos, Links, and Videos
Image’s Description, Title, Caption, Alter-text in the Lightbox

Active Installation & Rating:

Pricing:

This amazing plugin has a free version; you can get it from the WordPress plugin directory. But if you want even more flexibility and customization options, you can get premium extensions. These extensions are going to cost you $29 to $69. 

WP Carousel

WP Carousel is a user-friendly and powerful WordPress slider and gallery plugin with a full-featured built-in lightbox.

WP carousel’s lightbox provides top-notch aesthetic visual experiences for your images, WooCommerce products, videos, and more.

Its intuitive and interactive experience increases the conversion rate and accelerates your business growth.  

Along with Lightbox, you can create attention-grabbing sliders, carousels, and galleries with almost anything – images, posts, products, videos, mix-content, and external.

In addition, it allows you to display your sliders and galleries in 7 premade layouts: Slider, carousel, grid, Masonry, Justified, and Thumbnails Slider. 

It’s completely responsive and performs superbly on all devices. Plus, it’s compatible with all popular themes and plugins, including WooCommerce.   

Key Features

Supports images, WooCommerce products, GIFs, photos, YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Self-hosted, and other media.
Hide/Show and customize content caption and description. 
Image counter, infinite loop. 
Autoplay, keyboard navigation. 
7 Transition Effects between slides. 
Lightbox bottom thumbnails gallery
Social share and download button
Sharper image in retina display
8 open-close animation types
30+ carousel settings. 
Lightweight, responsive, and optimized for speed. 
Scheduling sliders and galleries. 
Watermark and image protection.    

Active Installation & Rating:

Pricing

The plugin has a free version in WordPress.org. The pro version costs $39 for a single site.

Simple Lightbox 

Simple Lightbox is another free plugin and is very well-rated on WordPress.org. It offers you a simple and quick lightbox for your posts and pages.

Indeed, it won’t offer you a wide range of settings, but if you are looking for a minimalist way of opening your images in a lightbox style, you are going to love this plugin. 

This plugin enables lightbox on almost everything, including posts, pages, widgets, menus, homepage, categories & tags, etc. You can display images separately or even in a slideshow. You have the control to set animations, transitions, overlay opacity, slideshows’ speed, etc. 

This is simply the best plugin for those needing a simple lightbox with no fancy styles or many custom things. It’s comfortable, lightweight, and swift. 

Key Features

Dark & Light Designs
Mobile-optimized Themes.
Offers Keyboard Navigation
Premium Addons Included.
Supports Links in Widgets.
Displays Metadata of Media.

Active Installation & Rating:

Pricing

This Lightbox plugin is free; download it from the WordPress repository. 

Optinmonster 

Optinmonster is one of the best WordPress lightbox popup plugins and the most powerful lead generation tool as well.

Its lead-boosting lightbox popup helps you to capture visitors’ attention right away. You can use Lightbox and an entire suite of other tools to get more customers effectively and leads from your website. 

Optimonster’s lightbox popup lets you deliver your targeted message at the right time for maximum engagement.

These lightbox popups are proven to work for sales conversion as well as email lead capture. You can set your rules to trigger your Lightbox campaigns. 

You can show any kind of offer, including special coupons like ours, for even greater engagement. No coding knowledge is necessary for any customization. 

Key Features

Show Specific Messages to Targeted Audience
Drag and Drop Builder
Exit-Intent Technology
Monster Effects Animations and Sound Effects
User-Friendly Template for Building Your Lightbox

Active Installation & Rating:

Pricing:

Optinmonster starts at $20 monthly, and you will be billed annually. 

WP Video Lightbox 

WP Video Lightbox is another powerful free WordPress lightbox plugin that allows you to embed videos on a page using a lightbox overlay display.

This plugin can display images, such as YouTube, Flash, iFrame, Vimeo, etc., in a lightbox overlay. These embedded videos can also be viewed on iPhone and iPad.

This plugin is incredibly video-friendly, as no complicated settings are involved. After you finish the installation, you can use this plugin immediately. You can control animation speed, auto-play slideshow, opacity, and other options. 

Some additional features are packed with this plugin, including – YouTube load over HTTPS, privacy-enhanced mode, description in popup overlay, etc. 

Also Read: 3 Best Video Popup WordPress Plugins

Main Features

Customizable Lightboxes for Images and Videos
Display YouTube, Flash, & Vimeo Files
Beginner-Friendly.
Easy to Customize
Various Control Options like Animation, Speed, Auto Play Slideshow, and Opacity. 
Privacy Enhanced Mode
Load YouTube Video Over HTTPS

Active Installation & Rating:

Pricing

WP Video Lightbox is free to use. You won’t have to pay a single penny. But if you want, you can donate to the developer. 

Wonder Lightbox

Wonder Lightbox is considered one of the best WordPress lightbox plugins for displaying images and videos in a lightbox popup or gallery.

It comes with the support of Flash SWF movies, photos, PDFs, YouTube, Vimeo, MP4s, and WebM videos. Wonder Lightbox is fully cross-browser compatible; therefore, it will work the same on every browser. 

If you are worried about its responsiveness, don’t worry; the developer team has made this plugin look the same on every screen size. It is compatible with the most popular page builders, including Block Editor and Classic Editor.

If you hesitate, you can try it for free before purchasing. 

Key Features

Display Images and videos in a Lightbox
Supports Images, PDF, YouTube, Vimeo, Mp4, Flash, etc
Entirely Device Responsive
Cross-browser Compatible
Lightbox Gallery
Easy to Use

Active Installation & Rating:

N/A.

Pricing:

The standard license of this WordPress lightbox plugin will cost you $49 with a maximum of 1 website. If you want to use it on more websites, try Multiple licenses of 5 websites for $79. If that isn’t enough for you, try the unlimited license for unlimited websites at $149. 

Lightbox & Modal

Lightbox for Elementor is one of the interesting widgets that comes with the premium version of Essential Addons for Elementor.

The lightbox & modal widget lets you display your videos, images, or any other content with a popup. The coolest part is that you can adjust the desirable trigger actions to activate the lightbox.

Furthermore, you can set the layout and add animation to the popup to make it look amazing and mesmerizing enough to steal the visitor’s attention right away.

It lets you even choose a fullscreen layout for image, video, text, or other media-type popups.

If you are using Elemento page builder, Essential Addons is a great choice for building a website with amazing widgets.

Key Features

Showcase Image, Video, & Text Content
Supports Popup
Action Triggers for Popups
Set Animation to Popups
Set the Popup Layout
Popup Images on Button Trigger
Showcase Image to Button Trigger
Insert Custom HTML into the Lightbox
Fullscreen Image Popup

Active Installation & Rating:

Price

Get the widget with the premium version of Essential Addons. Pricing starts from $49/year for a single website.

ARI Fancy Lightbox

If you are looking for a premium WordPress plugin, try ARI Fancy Lightbox. With this powerful lightbox plugin, you can easily add a lightbox to your site.

It creates feature-rich lightboxes that are fully responsive. Therefore, it adjusts to any device screen and ensures that your visitors are hooked on your content. 

With ARI Fancy Lightbox, you can show any type of content, including images, NextGEN, FooGallery, web pages, inline content, etc. It will work fine on any device and supports gestures inline zoom for convenient use on mobile phone devices. 

The ARI Fancy Lightbox plugin also comes with one-click integration with the WooCommerce plugin and deep linking. Therefore, you can show WooCommerce product images and lightboxes by clicking on a deep link. 

Key Features

Responsive and Fancy Lightbox
Supports any Media File
WooCommerce Integration
Deep Linking Compatible
Cross-browser Compatible
Option to Load Titles for Images 
Splash Pop-up Creation Option
Shortcodes Available

Active Installation & Rating:

Price

As this is a premium plugin, it will cost you $12, and you can purchase it from Codecanyon. 

ModuloBox 

Last but not least, ModuloBox is a premium lightbox plugin that is powerful and efficient.

This plugin is built on an advanced modular framework that allows you to create magnificent lightbox pop-ups.

This plugin is optimized for the best efficiency and performance; you may consider this as the best premium option you are looking for. 

ModuloBox is fully compatible with popular gallery plugins like – Envira Gallery, jetPack, NextGen Gallery, etc. It is versatile and supports any image and media file using HTML5. 

Also Read: 7 Best Video Gallery WordPress Plugins

Key Features

Versatile Support for Embedding Media Files
Multi-touch Gesture Support
Fully Responsive
Infinite Scrolling Option
Lightbox Gallery and Popups
Smooth Animations and Smart Resizing
Social Sharing Options
Multiple Galleries Support

Active Installation & Rating:

Price

You can purchase ModuloBox only for $49 from Codecanyon.

Conclusion

Hope you’ve found the right Lightbox plugin for you. If you’ve found it yet, let us know via comment.

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