Technology

I just use the tried and true method of unsubscribing and watching another channel

I've used clickbait remover addon for more than a year now. I vastly prefer just a random screenshot as a thumbnail than those custom ones.

But then how do I filter out clickbaity videos?

I want to know when YT made it possible to have thumbnails be their own image and not taken from the video itself. I can scrub the video through every single frame and never actually find the thumbnails anymore.

Hell, sometimes the text in the thumbnail says something that isn't even discussed in the video at all. Those are the ones I hate the most. And I wouldn't necessarily want to remove the thumbnail, just because there are plenty of channels that make the thumbnail the actual title and the title is just... Bullshit, non-descriptive, a number, etc. Not all of them are bad. Civvie 11 and Internet Comment Etiquette do this. Erik probably does it on purpose both for the fact it works and also because he is a satire channel that regularly shits on these practices by showing how dumb they are. Civvie also satirizes YT's bullshit, but that's not really the prime focus of the channel.

Thing is, I know I won't click the ones on the left. The ones on the right actually look interesting.

... Which means I'll be promoting writing clickbaity titles by clicking on the videos and I'm not sure how I feel about that

Nice way to remove clickbait, but now my home page looks like 2014

i would use this but some of the channels i watch the most number their thumbnails and dont do clickbait like this. if i could pick and choose per channel somehow it would be more helpful to me. i do agree with the sentiment though!

Great idea! You can't really get away from the clickbait thumbnails. As others said even good channels are heavily incentivised to do it.

It is already really difficult to find the stuff that is actually worth watching on YouTube. If you boycotted all clickbait thumbnails you would miss out on some otherwise great creators.

I'd much rather take clickbait thumbnails and baked in ads though as I can get around them with extensions and there is still a worthwhile video behind them.

When creators start doing low effort content like reaction videos, unboxings/product first impressions, or product "showcases" (ads) is when I usually know a channel has outlived its usefulness and stop watching altogether.

Thank you for the link. It works great! Now I have the perfect YouTube with Ublock Origin + Sponsor Block + Dearrow + Return Youtube Dislike. It's crazy how many extensions you need to add to make YouTube bearable.... it's really time for a good competitor to take its place !

Can't wait to have this on YouTube ReVanced and SmartTube.

Getting rid of "thumbnail face" is reason enough to use this add-on. Thanks for the recommendation!

Awesome idea and the feedback suggests it works well, too. Any plans to support Firefox on Android?

this is brilliant!! thank you so much for creating this and also for giving us sponsorblock. you're the goat!!

Is this available as a vanced patch aswell?

Can vouch this extension is amazing. I started using it when it had 200 chrome downloads and it was already had many prominent creators in its database.

Title and thumbnail replacements are based on community votes, just like sponsorblock.

The real engineering original is basically spot on.

I have dearrow and I like it. I also installed Unhook, which "hides YouTube related videos, comments, shorts tab, suggestions wall, homepage recommendations, trending, and other distractions".