Top Extensions to Make YouTube Bearable

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. https://ublockorigin.com/: (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. https://sponsor.ajay.app/: 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. https://www.returnyoutubedislike.com/: Since YouTube removed the dislike count, it’s been harder to gauge the quality of videos. This extension brings back the dislike count.
  4. https://dearrow.ajay.app/: Extension for crowdsourcing better titles and thumbnails. It removes click-bait titles and thumbnails providing a cleaner Youtube.
  5. https://github.com/doma-itachi/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. https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/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

LightDelaBlue,
@LightDelaBlue@lemmy.world avatar

where mr beast addon???

WarmSoda,

What do you watch that makes his stuff come up? I’ve never seen any of his videos suggested to me in my life.

LightDelaBlue,
@LightDelaBlue@lemmy.world avatar

its a joke addons taht put mrbeast in alls tubmnails nothing serious XD just a funny silly joke

Ab_intra,
@Ab_intra@lemmy.world avatar

Or you could just subscribe to YouTube Premium (same price as Spotify) and get YouTube Music with it… Also it seems like Google is planning on having a three strike policy on ad blocking.

CaptObvious,

Found the Google shill.

chat_mots,
@chat_mots@jlai.lu avatar

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

QubaXR,
@QubaXR@lemmy.world avatar

DeArrow is a misguided effort. Without it you can identify spammy content at a glance. Without it it’s like all gossip tabloids were sold with The New Yorker cover.

deepinder_brar,

Use youtube revanced with microg on non rooted phones, it comes with all the premium and unique features…

joey,

I’m in the Newpipe bandwagon. NewPipe has been the best way for accessing YouTube for a long time on Android. It’s available in f-droid. Another plus on my book. I’m kinda not so much into installing a random apk for revanced.

Diego,

Another vote for newpipe. You can download entire videos or just the audio, keep listening to videos when leaving the app or even when turning off your screen. My only complaint is it doesn’t have screen mirroring functionality.

zxo,

NewPipe is great, it gets around the main issue with Piped/Invidious instances (that being rate limiting by Google). I’ve been using it for years and it’s been great all this time.

Speculater,

Reminder to all, Firefox on Android can use UBlock Origin. It’s an easy setup, no more ads.

BaroqueInMind,
@BaroqueInMind@kbin.social avatar

Corollary, you can install Firefox Nightly and setup an addon collection on the FF website and use pretty much all desktop addons on your mobile Firefox browser.

Bogasse,

I’ll add that NewPipe is a great app, has a fork to support sponsorblock and can mix your YouTube subscription with other sources (eg. PeerTube), which could allow for a smooth transition.

You have to be willing to loose your personalized suggestions page, but when it comes to me it helped a lot to get less addicted.

NightOwl,

Losing personalized suggestions was a plus for me, since youtube is so thrown off by one video and even when it recommends channels that fit into the genre you like it doesn’t seem to be able to understand why it is that you like certain channels.

For instance, video games. It should know not to recommend channels that don’t have really loud youtubers who are screaming at me to smash the like button and have the most obnoxious thumbnails. But, it just sees that I like games. And then it is horrible for spoilers where I might watch a video for a game review I’m interested in then next it does is start filling my feed with spoiler content from that video.

I can do without it.

Bogasse,

Yeah it’s the same for me. When I watch Youtube on my computer I often feel like I wasted a lot of time. On my phone I can only pick high quality content from the curated list of creators that I’ve maintained over the years, and it is a much better experience.

noodlejetski,

just one needed: LibRedirect set to automatically redirect the URLs to Piped or Invidious. no.ads, no shorts, no tracking, and Piped comes with SponsorBlock built in.

addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/…/libredirect/

schwim,
@schwim@lemmy.world avatar

I found this comment more useful than the OP. With Google getting ready to block ad blockers, I’m hoping this is a way to continue watching YT content.

CumBroth,
@CumBroth@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

If you are getting unsatisfactory performance from public instances (they might be getting rate-limited), consider self-hosting. I’m running my own instance of Invidious with SponsorBlock (added my domain to list of custom domains) and using Redirect^1^ to redirect YouTube links to it. It’s great!

  1. Couldn’t get LibRedirect to work properly. Followed this guide instead.
fidelacchius,

Sponsorblock is a life safer.

10EXP,

Truffle improves the livestream watching experience on YouTube significantly, adding a Twitch-style theatre mode (with chat on the side), BetterTTV emotes, and more.

o_d,
@o_d@lemmy.ml avatar

I almost installed, but the permissions it asks for feels a bit extreme. I’ll probably stick to creating my own theatre mode by using the enhancer full window mode with the pop-out chat to the side.

Stealth_Bummer,

Youtube search fix: This is not a extension but if you save this as a bookmark javascript:location.href=location.href+‘&sp=CAASAhAB’; in your browser it can be used to remove youtubes recommended / “people also watched” videos from a search.

To use it, search for something on youtube and then click the bookmark you have made and it will then reload the search page and only show listings for what you searched for and remove youtubes recommended / “people also watched" videos from the search.

Crul,

javascript:location.href=location.href+‘&sp=CAASAhAB’;

In firefox, you can also add a keyword to this shortcut (e.g.: yt):

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s&sp=CAASAhAB

Then you can use it from the search bar like yt testing and it will redirect you to this URL (replacing %s with testing):

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=testing&sp=CAASAhAB

EDIT: and a fancier option is to use Redirector, Request Control (or similar) to create a redirection from YT searches without the CAASAhAB query param to the one with it.

zeekzag,
@zeekzag@lemmy.world avatar

If you use a script manager (Tampermonkey, Violentmonkey, Greasemonkey, Firemonkey) I can recommend some userscripts:

  1. Tabview for Youtube - condenses comments, description, playlists and chat into a neatly organised sidebar,
  2. YT Resource Unholder - improves how YT handles resources and improves performance,
  3. YT CPU Tamer - more performance improvements,
  4. YT AV1 - forces YT to use AV1 for all videos.
DagingAnalog,

What’s the benefit of AV1 on youtube?

zeekzag,
@zeekzag@lemmy.world avatar

Videos encoded with AV1 are smaller and look better on lower bitrates so you save some bandwidth. I noticed it’s also a bit less straining on the CPU which is nice if you wanna save some battery juice if you’re on a laptop without a dGPU.

kokesh,
@kokesh@lemmy.world avatar

Vanced. Still works like a charm! Get Vanced Manager from APK Mirror and install.

wizardbeard,
@wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Please don’t. Revanced has been around for well over a year now and is actually maintained. Vanced was abandoned ages ago. Revanced is significantly less buggy, has options to block shorts, and has Sponsorblock built in now.

Official site: revanced.app

APK mirror is great for getting the right Youtube APK version to patch with Revanced Manager though. Revanced also supports Youtube Music, pretty much giving you the premium features for free.

kokesh, (edited )
@kokesh@lemmy.world avatar

Switched to it, root install, total happiness.

dottedgreenline,
@dottedgreenline@lemmy.ml avatar

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.

HelloHotel,
@HelloHotel@lemmy.world avatar

Its a little odd, but onetab+yt-dlp+musicolet alongside newpipe is the best combo for me

pazukaza,

Please keep in mind that every extension you install is an attack vector for hackers. Just because an extension does something cool doesn’t mean you should install it.

Please stick with the most used extensions, the ones that Mozilla recommends. This is for your safety.

soulifix,

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.

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