so let's fix it
youtube is an infuriating site. incompetent management and malicious design, but some truly joyful and fascinating content. how do we get the most of that? i've been using a collection of browser extensions and ublock filters for the past half decade to make youtube into something i can find joy in, especially as someone prone to sensory overload. let's go through what those are.
unhook
this is the crown jewel right here. if you do nothing else, install unhook right now. it's an extension which lets you toggle various features of youtube, removing many distractions and frustrations, and streamlining the process. i mostly just use my subscriptions & my watch later; i don't want to be pulled into an infinite recommended-video rabbit hole, nor experience the overwhelming colours and shapes of a sea of recommended vids.
i personally hide home feed & redirect to subscriptions, hide recommended, hide end screen feed, hide merch, hide inapt search results, hide explore & trending, hide more from youtube, hide shorts tab, & disable autoplay. these have served me very well.
youtube-shorts block
so, about those shorts. hiding the shorts tab is all well and good, but when a channel i like posts a short, it sends me into the shorts ui and scrolling down will get me stuck in intertia hell of infinite doomscrolling. we can avoid that with this extension; it turns the shorts ui into a normal video ui, so you can keep all the wonders of unhook and avoid getting distracted and distressed
sponsorblock
it does exactly what it says on the tin; it autoskips sponsored segments of videos. you can also toggle it to do a few other things, like skipping recaps and credits. there're sections i'd never want it to skip, like unpaid self-promo (i'm subscribed to this channel! i wanna hear what they're doing!), but you can adjust it all to your liking.
this skipping-database is all community submitted and works for music on youtube too! if there's a song you like where the video has an intro that's not part of the song, you could submit a "non-music" block section so the video would skip over that part for everyone who wants to skip non-music in song videos :]
ublock origin
you all have this. if you don't have this, go get ublock origin! it's the best adblock hands down, and has a few nifty extras. for one, if you click the ublock icon in your browser, then click the eyedropper, you can select elements in your page to filter out, you'll be able to fine tune it, but upon creating that filter, that part of the page will never appear again!! ... unless you go into the filters (click ublock origin icon -> settings gears -> my filters) and delete the line it just generated.
i have a bunch of these for youtube but i would be lying if i told you i remember which lines do what, so go forth and filter your own elements out! adjust youtube to work for how you want to use it!
enhancer for youtube
this, admittedly, is nowhere near as important as the others, but it lets you add a few nifty extra features such as looping between timestamps, reversing playlist order, taking screenshots of videos, some keyboard shortcuts, and finer adjustment of video speed. you can also set your own theming easily, and do some intimidating things i don't bother with.
but what about finding new videos?
without algorithmic recommendation, i won't see any new or interesting channels. how do we fix that?
aye, keen eye! to be honest, not even i am completely sure about this yet, but what i've been doing is just checking out stuff i see on cohost and discord, and occasionally reinstalling the youtube app on my phone1 and inevitably getting sucked into it for hours at a time where i find new channels that pique my interest.
it's not perfect but it's a lot better than waterboarding yourself with the youtube algorithm, and at least for me has resulted in a much healthier relationship with the site. if a channel i'm subscribed to has posted a video i'm interested in, i'll stick it in my watch later, and whenever i want videos to watch (while eating or relaxing in the evening, for instance) i'll load up that playlist.
i hope this helps you forge a more comforting space on that hellsite ✌ if you have any additional suggestions, i'd love to hear them in the comments
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i have the leechblock extension to block youtube on my phone, as well as the other extensions, and will generally use it to disable the block for ~10 minutes if i really gotta use youtube on my phone. sometimes i will cave and reinstall the app only to scroll shorts for hours, get depressed, and feel overstimulated. for information about how to install firefox extensions on your phone, check here
