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
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)
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
uBO do remove trackers with the
EasyPrivacy
anduBlock 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.Not only is Ghostery redundant when you use uBlock Origin (you can choose the tracking removal lists, like EasyPrivacy, for example), Ghostery has a conflict of interests as it works with the ads industry at the same time it has this tool, and it reports the ads and tracking it finds back to advertisers, who can then make them bypass that detection better.
If you insist in a separate add-on, Privacy Badger does the same blocking of trackers and it is maintained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit for digital privacy.