- 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.
On Android you can use LibreTube, NewPipe or a fork of it called Tubular.
Or SmartTube on Android TV.
On Android, there’s also ReVanced which lets you apply patches to a bunch of apps, not just YouTube. Unlike some other ways of patching apps (like Magisk modules), ReVanced doesn’t need root since it patches the APK before you install the app.
Oh yeah I completely forgot about SmartTube. I left out ReVanced on purpose, because it still uses the proprietary YouTube app. But if you’re ok with this, there’s also uYouPlus for iOS.
ReVanced used the proprietary app, but it patches out a bunch of stuff. I like it because it still works like the regular app.
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.
It’s been a while since I watched his videos, looks like my day off is planed out.
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.
You can exclude channels from dearrow, do that with him
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.
It really only serves to perpetuate the behaviour you’re trying to avoid cuz to the creator there’s still views coming in.
Just my two cents.
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.
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”
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.
The amount of userscripts I have for YouTube is getting ridiculous…
You can use Invidious or Piped. These have a much better, less bloated UI and Piped comes with SponsorBlock and DeArrow built in. You also don’t get any ads or Google trackers.
They’re moving comments?? Why??
The UI department will probably get massive layoffs if they don’t change anything, so they’re forced to “”““innovate””“”.
Yeah. Like the Gmail login page.
When Christian Selig announced his independent Apple Vision YouTube App, I thought twice about actually getting one, just so I would’t have to use YouTubes ridiculous Application and Web UIs.
@christianselig@mastodon.social
Then I decided that it would be silly to spend any money on a 1st Gen Apple Vision.
Invidious
Or Piped
Not as nice (in my opinion)
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?
😱😲 that’s because these two boys are more effective.
Every thumbnail has someone gasping over what happened in the video.
try the trending page
Invidious exists, ui is a bit strange but its fine
And based on it, Freetube
That’s a good one.
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/
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.
You can replace some of them with a userstyle extension (not Stylish, that tracks you) and applying a style someone else already made.
FreeTube? Or are you watching on your phone?
Just dropping in to say FreeTube is excellent. Carry on.
You should also try YT Redux
