this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Hello fellow, ~~lemmings~~, lemmur !

If you are like me, you probably spend a lot of time on YouTube, more than you want to admit.

I remember the days when videos had stars instead of thumbs up or down, and when YouTube had, let's say, more mature content on it.

Now the site has a lot of functionalitys that are great for Google, but that I don't need nor want.

So, to improve the enjoyment of the platform, I present to you the ultimate extension survival kit for YouTube:

  1. uBlock Origin: (or your favorite ad-blocker) This is an absolute must-have. It's a good ad-blocker that not only blocks YouTube ads but also works across all websites. It's lightweight, efficient, and open-source. Say goodbye to ads.
  2. SponsorBlock: Skip over the sponsored segments of videos. It's a community-driven project, with users submitting the timestamps of sponsored content. You can even customize it to skip over different types of segments like intros, outros, and more.
  3. Return YouTube Dislike: Since YouTube removed the dislike count, it's been harder to gauge the quality of videos. This extension brings back the dislike count.
  4. DeArrow: Extension for crowdsourcing better titles and thumbnails. It removes click-bait titles and thumbnails providing a cleaner Youtube.
  5. YouTube Shorts Block: If you're not a fan of shorts, this extension is for you. It plays the Youtube shorts video as if it were a normal video and hides the "shorts" tab from the left menu. Firefox Link Chrome Link
  6. Enhancer for YouTube: Allows you to add theming options, auto-HD, keyboard shortcuts and more.

These are the extensions I use. Don't hesitate to suggest more. I will edit the post accordingly.

It's not lost on me that these extensions remove many things that were not initially a problem on YouTube but that either arose because of the monetary incentive of Google handling the website, Youtubers trying to make money, or as countermeasures to problems that were taken care of by a previous extension. This kind of feels like an arms race…

Edit 1: Changed the YouTube Shorts Block description and added Enhancer for YouTube

(page 2) 50 comments
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Annotations Restored For Youtube is also a really good one, adds back the old styled annotations to old videos that had them, makes old videos a little bit more watchable if they had important info in the annotations

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

For custom settings during playback and some granular tweaks, the extension enhancer for YouTube might come in handy 👍.
I’ll take a look at DeArrow, looks like a great project thx

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I am currently stuck with a super old ipad3 on ios9.3.6 and the only way I have been able to watch youtube on it is through the edge browser, nothing else seems to work. But the version of edge is so old that there aren't any working extensions. I have jailbroken it with phoenix and installed cydia (both of which suddenly stopped working), but it turns out the cydia app that lets you install older versions of stuff has also been discontinued.

I have never not used some sort of adblocker, I am shocked at how often I have to interact with the device to skip ads. You also have to unfullscreen to be able to skip so sometimes I just let the ads run.

I get that ads keep youtube chugging along but, jesus christ, maybe it shouldn't be chugging along any longer. I was trying to watch a 40 minute video yesterday and there were double ads basically every 6 minutes! I feel the freedom to place ads wherever you want in your own video has really destroyed the youtube experience for those who can't or won't use adblockers.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ive been yearning for a while a "video or channel for later, go away now. dont show me the same video more than 5 times" plugin

detailswhen I load a video or for the first 5 videos in the recommended section when I press a button, of those not in my subscriptions or whitelist, add the video or whole channel to a blocklist and dont show in any list (home, recommendeds, etc), update lists on open pages to reflect the change

Its ment to cull the garbage and get a more inde youtube, I like an artist called Sui uzi but listen to their diskography once and youtube will drive you to listen to the same tracks repeatedly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Does this stuff work on mobile?

I use my phone to cast, and/or a google dongle on the TV for Youtube primarily. Almost never from a desktop.... does this work still?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Recommendation: add Vinegar for all the Apple (iOS, macOS, iPadOS) users. It’s suuuuper good

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Vinegar

Users have to pay for it, correct?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Any idea if there's a way to block shorts using PiHole? I mostly consume YouTube on mobile devices (Android and iOS) but would love to get rid of that garbage.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Also don't forget these two:

  • De-mainstream Youtube
  • Clickbait remover for Youtube
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I'll gladly take YouTube Shorts Block. It is by far, to me, the most unnecessary thing I've found on YouTube. So when you watch one of these things, note that you cannot control the volume of them. It's always mute or not mute. They also have a tendency to snap in place when you're between videos and in doing so, will restart the video all over again. It is annoying.

I get it's purpose, but I don't need it in my face.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

In addition to some of the ones listed in OP, I use

  • YouTube Auto Like - automatically likes videos you open them (optionally only when you're subscribed to the channel). If you're on a Chromium browser, Google removed this extension from their web store so you can't install it from there anymore. But you can install it manually if you want by downloading it from the Github repo here.

    I also use the following userscripts:

  • Return Youtube Dislike - Does the same thing as the Return Youtube Dislike extension in the OP

  • Youtube Shorts Redirect - redirects Youtube Shorts to a full watch page, so you can watch them like a regular video.

  • Resize YT To Window Size - resizes the video player so that it fills in the entire dimensions of the browser window and moves video players to the top of the page so you can scroll down to see comments, recommend videos, etc.

  • YouTube CPU Tamer by AnimationFrame - reduces Youtube's CPU usage during video playback. I don't really understand the technical aspects but it's all explained in the description of the userscript. This script IS NOT compatible with SponsorBlock!

    Stuff I'm looking for (if anyone has any recommendations):

  • Remove duplicate videos from a playlist

  • display playlists in a grid layout instead of a list layout

  • block youtube channels i don't like

edit: fixed a formatting mistake

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I really like Distraction Free Youtube You can remove the trending tab, shorts, recommendations, comments aka all of the time wasting fluff which really helped me cut back my YouTube usage

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I love to see all this fantastic innovation but it’s a shame that most of it is confined to desktop/laptop computers. 95% of my YouTube consumption is on my phone, iPad, and Roku. Those platforms just aren’t extensible in the same ways. It’s too bad because I’m least likely to sit at my gaming PC watching videos.

I will mention that if you go premium, ads are removed on all devices.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Can you install Android apps on the Roku? SmartTubeNext is amazing on Android TV as it has most of these extensions integrated. On the Nvidia Shield TV is works like a charm.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Google does not like this...

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (6 children)

for quite some time I use newpipe on mobile and freetube on desktop to watch youtube videos... Its not without its problems, but it gets rid of tracking, adds and other nuisance on their sites.

But mostly if I can, I use and support other sites like odysee.com

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

YouTube Unhook is also great

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