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:
- Open Stylebot options
- 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;
}
- Save Style and Refresh Youtube
Optional:
- Dark Reader: Dark mode on any web page (and you can toggle it per page as well)
- Video Speed Controller: More control over video speed
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
Freetube has profiles for that. I use it to group channels which post longer video essays
That doesn’t let you log in with a Google account though does it? YouTube is my primary source of entertainment and I mostly watch it on tv nowadays and across other devices, I can’t go with an option with a “local” account.
Grayjay has subscription groups, which would be what you’re describing. Grayjay desktop is currently in alpha tho
Does that allow your watch history and other stuff to get stored back on your Google account though?
You can toggle that
Oh I’ll have a look into it then, thanks, at a quick glance it didn’t look like a thing that was possible and it was just imports to a local account
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.
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.