- Enhancer for Youtube
- uBlock Origin
- CustomTube
- Return YouTube Dislikes
- Annotations Restored
- SponsorBlock
- DeArrow
Thankfully there are better frontends for many social media sites. For YouTube, you can use Piped and Invidious. LibRedirect is a browser addon that automatically redirects all YouTube links to your selected frontend. If you want a native desktop app, check out FreeTube. On Android you can use LibreTube, NewPipe or a fork of it called Tubular. On iOS, you can configure Yattee to work with Piped and Invidious, this guide explains it: https://gonzoknows.com/posts/yattee/.
Doesn’t piped completely remove the tracking and what not? Which… I know it sounds bad but I want that. YouTube’s algorithm honestly gives me some really cool shit based on what I’ve watched
Without tracking, it recommends stuff based on the current video. No idea how different the results might be if you have whole history for them to evaluate
That’s… Something. It would still give me cool stuff I guess. I might start looking into this
I think randomness seems to work better than their algorithm. Youtube didn’t recommend Cayley Odle because of anything I’d watched before, but … damn.
I’ve not encountered Privacy Guides before, but that’s a really lovely website!
It’s an awesome website with an awesome community. Definitely check out their Lemmy community !privacyguides@lemmy.one and the forum discuss.privacyguides.net
Is dearrow actually good? Does it work for small streamers?
It often overcorrects, like not every shitpost really needs a title that sounds like a news article. But for some really clickbaity YouTubers (most) it makes the titles much more usable. The titles are submitted by users, so if the streamer is very small there might be no one to write the titles.
Tech Connections is a great example imo
“This 90s Microwave is Better Than Yours” is clickbait sure, but it’s also literally the point of the video. It got corrected to something like “review of the Panasonic yadda yadda from 1996” and like, that’s a less accurate title, guys, it’s not actually a review of old kitchen stuff lol
Yeah, that is annoying. But for the “You won’t BELIEVE what this microwave can do! 🤯🤯🤯” or worse the “This appliance from the 90s is going to REVOLUTIONIZE your kitchen!” at least become something that gives you some idea if you want to watch. Unfortunately some good videos are hidden behind shitty titles I otherwise wouldn’t click.
Not technology connections obviously, their titles are fine.He’s great. And active on Mastodon.
Yeah, I’d really prefer something that supplements the titles rather than replacing them. If the title asks a question or is deliberately vague about a particular piece of information then a plugin that provided the answer (while still leaving the original title and thumbnail in place) could be useful, but as it is I shut off dearrow after a few minutes. It was just making things worse.
id personally be up for something that replaces the main title, but still displays the original title.
Hmm. Interesting extension. But for me, not being a heavy Youtube consumer, think I prefer to see the original title and clickbait thumbnail so I can avoid the over-the-top clickbaity stuff easier and not waste my time or give them bastards a view.
Unfortuanlty the clickbait is super effective against the mass-audiences. This makes everything else seem less favorable to the algorithm. If a channel wants to get views, they have to join in to get new viewers or they will get burried by the allgorithum. For full time YouTube’s that is financially devastating.
If people only click on “you won’t belive X”, then unfortuanlty thats what all the channels have to do. Some do it more subtle than others, but most videos names are some form of clickbait.
I get it why they have to do it, I dont like it, buts that’s current reality of how YT works. It does bother alot me is when channels complty lie in their title. There’s a difference between “STOP USING LINUX MAJOR EXPLOIT LINUX IS DEAD” and “MAJOR EXPLOIT FOUND IN LINUX”
DeArrow let’s us change both to an approiate title and we can choose to watch a video because we are interested in the topic or creator, while the creator makes BS titles in attempt to get enough views from the masses to feed themselves.
Also I don’t why so many de-arrow contributors feel the need to use the word “explaining” at the start of every title. Like “how VR has changed over the years is fine”, you don’t need to make it “Explaining how VR has changed over the years”.
I absolutely prefer the latter, adding “Explaining” makes it a readable title for me that I won’t skip over.
The main use is replacing thumbnail by a random or user-submitted timeframe. Titles can be converted to Sentence case to get rid of all caps words and emojis are removed. Titles can also be replaced by user-submitted alternatives.
It would be nice if they could automatically strip “and this happened” from titles.
I wish I installed sponsorblock sooner.
I didn’t for so long despite knowing about it, and now i cannot deal with YouTube without it
I know about it but don’t have it installed. What am I missing? If I want to skip a sponsorship I just press my arrow keys so I don’t see the big deal.
Imagine that being automatic. There is no interruption at all.
just a very strange cut
SponsorBlock automatically skips the entire sponsorship as soon as it starts, so a lot of the time you wouldn’t even know it was there if you didn’t see the green section of the playback bar.
It’s not just for sponsorships, either. You can set it to skip intro animations, reminders to subscribe, self promotion, etc.
It’s all crowdsourced. Users can submit labeled segements (intro/intermission, sponsor, self-promotion, non-music, filler, etc.) and you can adjust the client side settings to either prompt to skip, automatically skip, or ignore segments for those categories. It’s a huge time saver.
Skips not just sponsors, but also intros, outros, interaction requests “like, comment, subscribe, buy out merch”, filler & jokes if you want. It can easily cut vids down to half the length in some cases (without actually missing any real content).
I’m so glad that ReVanced has it built in. It’s wonderful.
I recently discovered there are extensions to disable YouTube hotkeys. I personally disabled numbers 0-9, so annoying and useless.
EDIT: the extension I use is Disable YouTube Seek by Number
I didn’t even check if it is open source. So if it’s secretly a Bitcoin miner don’t blame me.
why are you pressing numbers while watching a video in the first place?
Got 2 monitors. Sometimes I think I have another program focused, but turns out YouTube was focused. The other program also has 0-9 as keybinds (or just writing a number). Now the video jumped to a random timestamp.
Had this happen to me many times 🥲
I guess that’s fair. I don’t really do anything while watching besides eating.
cat
^ this
Gaming and accidentally alt tab
You can’t just say that and not give a link! I use quite a few of the hotkeys, but those ones in particular cause me grief. If you have an extension that lets you pick and chose, I beg you to save us from that pain.
I don’t give link because:
- I’m on mobile and idk it’s name.
- I found it with a quick Google search and chose the first option. Idk if it’s even open source. It might be mining crypto for all I know.
- I’ll edit my original comment with link when I get to my pc.
Not useless! I personally love quickly skipping the first chunk of a video with them.
wait until you find out about the arrow keys, or even better the media keys, which do 10 seconds at a time.
what extension? i hit those accidentally way too often
looked up “youtube shortcut” in firefox’s add ons and found “disable youtube number keyboard shortcuts”
Invidious
Or Piped
Not as nice (in my opinion)
Invidious exists, ui is a bit strange but its fine
And based on it, Freetube
That’s a good one.
Come to think about it, it’s been ages since I’ve seen or at least noticed a red arrow thumbnail. Is that just me or are they in decline?
try the trending page
for the longest time the annotations switch in the settings menu existed, up until like 2018 i wanna say? They removed annotations in 2016 iirc, may have been 2018, and i’m fuzzing the years, it’s been a hot while give me some slack.
Still sad about annotations.
FreeTube? Or are you watching on your phone?
Just dropping in to say FreeTube is excellent. Carry on.
I don’t care about video comments anymore; in my experience it was filled with attention-seeking content and incels trying to look cool. It’s also full of bots in the reply sections.
Instead, I use
mpvmedia player to watch YouTube. I pick a video off my recommendations or the subscription page then I copy the video link and then I just have to dompv <video link>in my terminal. It’s also much faster on my low-end PC.It doesn’t have sponser-block support, but it does have ad-blocker. I haven’t really checked sponser-block support yet either.
Edit: found this for sponser-block support.
HOWEVER, there’s cases where you do want to be able to like and comment: My main use case for Youtube these days is following crafters, people who make awesome stuff. And i do want to like and comment on those videos, not just for the obvious feedback to them but also to give them a hand in spreading the word of their stuff.
There’s even a firefox addon that lets you open videos in mpv with one click: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ff2mpv/
On macOS, I recommend a fork of mpv called IINA. It also has a Firefox addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-in-iina-x/
I also have pockettube for categorising my subscriptions
Is privacy badger still considered good for blocking embedded Twitter stuff?
Anyone know of a TamperMonkey addon to get the old YouTube UI back? Need to bookmark it for whenever YouTube makes the change on my account.
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As a mobile user, I’m just stuck with the stock YouTube app.
I do miss Vanced :-(
Have you tried revanced?
It took me a minute to figure out but thats bc im a dirt-eating cave dweller, so if you arent that you shouldnt have any trouble :3
Look into revanced
Mozilla on mobile lets you watch stuff in browser and you can get ublock as well! It also lets you play videos while it’s running in the background again. It’s truly heaven.
I use Newpipe, it’s not as good as Vanced, but better than reVanced. And good enough that I recoil in horror at the stock app.
I use the Newpipe Sponsorblock fork, but use the main YouTube client to find content then “share” it to Newpipe. A little fiddly as the share dialog is built to be hostile.
not as good as Vanced, but better than reVanced
How does that make sense? reVanced is just Vanced on steroids
Look into ReVanced (Android only). Get yourself a copy of the recommended YouTube apk version from apkmirror as specified in the patch manager. Load it from the internal storage, patch it right on your phone and install. Follow the prompts to sign in with your YT account on load. Good as new. The process got simplified, so it’s easier than ever. Also, they’re pretty on top of the emerging api changes and bugs. If you need more details, DM me. I’ll try to reply promptly.
