Modal Window and Lightbox can be an incredibly useful tool in building a modern website. Whether displaying a form or images for users they can provide a great user experience and increase retention. So If you need to create a modal and lightbox, here are 21 Modal Window & Lightbox Javascript Plugins to help you in your next web project.

Magic Slider with Layers & Carousel with LightBox Ad

It will help you to create the next generation of sliders, using the CSS3 transitions for layers and an ultra-smooth KenBurns effect.

Spotlight

Web’s most easy to integrate lightbox gallery library. Super-lightweight, outstanding performance, no dependencies.

Popbox

Popbox.js is a tiny javascript plugin for creating stackable modals. It is fully customizable and dependency free.

Tingle

A minimalist and easy-to-use modal plugin written in pure JavaScript.

Explodal

It lets you create a responsive, pretty cool modal window with an explosion effect

baguetteBox

Simple and easy to use lightbox script written in pure JavaScript

rmodal

A simple 1.2 KB modal dialog with no external dependencies.

jQuery Modal

The simplest modal you ever did see. I find this very easy to implement. Also the performance, appearance all are marvelous.

fancyBox

JavaScript lightbox library for presenting various types of media. Responsive, touch-enabled and customizable.

Intense Images

This is a stand alone library (no jquery, or the likes) so usage is pretty straight forward. All styling of image elements is up to the user, Intense.js only handles the creation, styling and management of the image viewer and captions.

AlertifyJS

A javascript framework for developing pretty browser dialogs and notifications.

Lity

This is a ultra-lightweight, accessible and responsive lightbox plugin which supports images, iframes and inline content out of the box.

ModuloBox

It is a modular JavaScript Lightbox plugin, which allows you to create responsive slideshow in a popup. Show off your favorite media in an elegant and responsive way. ModuloBox supports images, HTML5 & embed videos (Youtube, Vimeo, Dailymotion and Wisitia), iframe and HTML contents. All content types can be mixed together in a same gallery.

Basiclightbox

A lightbox that works in all modern browsers with images, videos, iframes and any kind of HTML, has support for CommonJS and AMD, a simple API and zero dependencies.

Zebra_Dialog

It is a small, compact (one JavaScript file, no dependencies other than jQuery 1.7.0+) , and highly configurable jQuery plugin for creating responsive modal dialog boxes, meant to replace native JavaScript alert and confirmation dialog boxes.

Launchy

An accessible modal window!

Chocolat

It enables you to display one or several images staying on the same page. The choice is left to the user to group together a series of pictures as a link, or let them appear as thumbnails. The viewer may appears full-page or in a block.

SmartPhoto

The most easy to use responsive image viewer especially for mobile devices.

Strip

This is a Lightbox that only partially covers the page. This makes it less intrusive and leaves room to interact with the page on larger screens while giving smaller mobile devices the classic Lightbox experience.

BigPicture

Lightweight JavaScript image / video viewer. Supports Youtube and Vimeo.

Amplify

It allows users to increase the size of images. Best used in narrow containers, between paragraphs. It is lightweight: 29 sloc of JS and 23 sloc of SCSS resulting in 1.22kB combined.

VenoBox

Just another responsive jQuery Lightbox plugin, suitable for images, inline contents, iFrames, Google-Maps, Ajax requests, Vimeo and YouTube videos.

Luminous

A simple, lightweight, no-dependencies JavaScript image lightbox.