Why YSK: Youtube’s enshittification creates an abysmal experience. There’s a list of Chrome extensions I’ve collected over the years that each fix an aspect of Youtube to bring back a genuine experience. I’ve seen in comments people mention one or two of these at a time, so this is a pack that contains everything you could need, and more.

Sample:

Essential Plugins:

  • Ghostery: Blocks trackers and ads
  • uBlock Origin: Blocks In-video ads
  • SponsorBlock: Skips in-video sponsor segments
  • Return Youtube Dislike: Returns the dislike button
  • DeArrow: Better titles and thumbnails, removes clickbait
  • Youtube Redux: Returns youtube to the older style
  • Style Bot: This tool allows you to edit CSS. With a bit of setup, you can use it to block sponsored videos from appearing in our video suggestions:
  1. Open Stylebot options
  2. Styles > New Style

URL: Youtube.com

CSS (copy and paste):

ytd-ad-slot-renderer,
ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(
  > #content
    > ytd-ad-slot-renderer
){
  display: none;
}
  1. Save Style and Refresh Youtube

Optional:

  • Frellwit
    76•20 days ago

    If you use uBO then Ghostery is redundant. It can also cause some of uBO’s filters to not work correctly.

    Also uBO can do what you did with stylebot. (If you use the full uBO extension, and not the limited Lite version for Chromium browsers):

    youtube.com##ytd-ad-slot-renderer
youtube.com##ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(ytd-ad-slot-renderer)
    • @Oka@sopuli.xyzOP
      -12•20 days ago

      I don’t think uBO removes trackers. I originally wanted to do the filter with uBO ) I have a filter for promoted LinkedIn jobs) but found a reddit thread that used Style Bot with instructions

      • Frellwit
        23•20 days ago

        uBO do remove trackers with the EasyPrivacy and uBlock filters – Privacy filters. More filters and options can also be enabled if you know what you’re doing. For beginners it’s best to stick to the default settings as more additions can lead to more breakage.

    • @null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      12•20 days ago

      This. Youtube is dead to me.

      Sounds like OP actually interacts on the site with comments and likes and whatever so I can’t account for that.

      In my case I get by with a combination of freetube and tubearchivist. I expect that one day youtube will find a way to finally close the door on this type of freeloading. Hopefully that will provide the incentive for more people to use more platforms.

      • @grue@lemmy.world
        8•20 days ago

        I like interacting with actual YouTube because it keeps track of my subscriptions and watch history across my devices. (It’s not that I want Google to know my habits; it’s that I don’t want videos I already watched coming up in my feed.)

        If one of these YouTube alternative front ends would solve for that use-case without too much faff and hassle, I’d happily switch.

        • @null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          3•20 days ago

          You can usually export & import your subscriptions and bookmarks.

          Mileage varies between different apps.

          Many would call that faff and hassle. I’m not that attached to my subscriptions.

          • @grue@lemmy.world
            6•20 days ago

            I need you to understand that manually exporting and importing subscriptions isn’t even slightly like automatically synchronizing watch history (including non-subscribed channels).

            • @null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              -1•20 days ago

              Sure. This functionality just isn’t important to me.

              Also maybe just be aware that starting sentences with “I need you to understand” makes you sound like a bit of an ass.

  • @Chip_Rat@lemmy.world
    28•20 days ago

    Ok I think I read all the comments sufficiently and I still don’t see the feature I most want: sort by duration.

    Dinner is in 20 minutes. Click time range, set for 15-20 minutes. Look through suggestions from subscriptions that are 15-20min long. Pick one. Enjoy video knowing when it ends you’ll be able to go eat dinner/go to bed/leave for work.

  • @kepix@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16•20 days ago

    im pretty sure ublock blocks trackers, and does it in a more open way.

    “enhancer for youtube” is also great, i like how it only allows one video playback at once. has some visual customisation options as well.

    the other is “youtube search fixer” , which disables the related and recommend crap from the search.

    • @gurnu@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2•20 days ago

      Clarification: you can set YT Enhancer to only allow one video to play, but you can enable multiple playback, too

      YouTube search fixer sounds like something I need, I hate that only the first ten or so search results are actually relevant

  • MrScottyTayEnglish
    8•20 days ago

    Biggest YouTube feature i miss was putting channels into folders so you could put all of your diy channels into one feed. I’ve not seen that replicated anywhere yet

    • @emb@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2•19 days ago

      Yes, seems like such an odd oversight from Google. They want you to subscribe to channels, but after even moderate use over a few years, you end up with a massive list of subscriptions. I guess it’s not actually an oversight, the bad UX (for finding specific content) is probably on purpose, they want to funnel you through their suggestions. But still, surprised they don’t include a way to organize it.

      I use an extension called PocketTube to organize them – but it stores data locally and doesn’t sync very well, so it wouldn’t fit your use case.

      • MrScottyTayEnglish
        2•19 days ago

        They removed it so they could make standard users reliant on the recommended feed so they’re more likely to watch high earning ad-backed videos.

        But I’m stuck of how short sighted their recommended algorithm is, it only takes into account the very recent videos you’ve watched so over time you get out of touch of old subscriptions unless they somehow go viral again or you search them up explicitly.

    • @invertedspear@lemm.ee
      0•19 days ago

      Just don’t look?

      Annoying that they clog the search results I guess, but they are a great way for creators to drive engagement with their long form content. Sports has guided me to some really interesting content I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

  • @fatcat@discuss.tchncs.de
    6•20 days ago

    Is there ANY way to turn of the auto dubbing of Youtube Shorts? I tried “Youtube Anti Translate” but it doesn’t work.

  • MrSilkworm
    5•20 days ago

    uBlock origin, Sponsor block, dark reader and return YouTube dislike will do the trick.

    Use those on a privacy orientented browser like librewolf on desktop or fennec on android.

    Also setting a private DNS would be helpfull. Adguard is a good one.

    Lastly there is always the choice of Revanved if you’re a little tech savvy and use Android

    • Poplar?
      1•19 days ago

      Or Newpipe for Android which you simply install.

  • @tordenflesk@lemmy.world
    3•20 days ago

    Some relevant userscripts:

    https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/498145-youtube-hd-premium

    https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/457319-youtube-video-resize-fix

    https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/13040-youtube-hide-watched-videos

    https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/480312-compact-youtube-layout

    https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/528305-youtube-channel-auto-redirect-to-videos-section

    https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/447727-youtube-disable-inline-playback-keep-hovering-to-play

    https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/479883-youtube-shorts-to-traditional-video

    https://github.com/Zren/ResizeYoutubePlayerToWindowSize/

  • @Tigrafale@sh.itjust.worksFrançais
    3•20 days ago

    One I use is called “Unhook”. You can use it to block different features e.g. Suggestions, video end screen suggestion, front page feed, shorts. It’s great if you spend too much time on YT and going on a cycle of watching suggested videos. Now, I only watch videos that appear in my subscriptions or those that I search for.

    I also use Better Subscriptions allowing me to hide watched or unwanted videos.

  • @trotfox@lemmy.world
    3•20 days ago

    How well does sponsor block work?

    I wrote a small script that filtered it by grabbing the transcription, uploading it to chatgpt through api, analyzing and sending back timestamps of suspected ads.

    These were overlayed on the video scroll bar in yellow blocks. As the video played it skipped these blocks altogether.

    It was fun to build and worked well. Now I’m on Firefox and would like something similar…

    • @helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
      10•20 days ago

      It works really good.

      Any channel with constant 10k views typically get a submission within a day, channels with 1mil views typically get submissions within the hour.

      Its not hard to submit times your self, its all built in to the player bar.

      There are multiple categories that you can choose what get automatically skipped or not.

      Some categories are; sponser, self-promotion, into/recap, credits, filler/tangents, non-music (for music videos) and highlight, which is a marker showing where the “point” of the video is.

    • @aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee
      7•20 days ago

      Sponsor block just uses crowd sourced submissions people vote on. No reason an ai bot couldn’t submit entries too, if they’re good they’ll get upvoted

    • @emb@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1•19 days ago

      Reminds me of this: https://butter.sonnet.io/

      Which also doesn’t have a Firefox version, but I was always kinda curious about.

      Actually, is that your project? Lol, you mentioned yellow blocks which made me think of butter.

  • @emb@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3•19 days ago

    Thanks for the list! I use a handful of these (in Firefox), but wasn’t aware of all of them. Youtube Redux especially seems cool.