Optimizing YouTube

For over 15 years, I have been an avid YouTube user, integrating the platform into my daily routine. YouTube provides me with both entertainment and access to excellent educational resources. Whether I'm exploring tutorials on software engineering, following chess strategy breakdowns, or catching up on football highlights, YouTube offers a rich variety of content that matches my interests. To enhance my experience further, I use various browser extensions that improve the platform's functionality. These tools allow me to tailor YouTube to my unique needs and preferences, transforming my time on YouTube into a more productive, enjoyable, and personalized experience.

uBlock Origin

• Chrome Extension
• Firefox Add-On
• uBlock Website

For me, this is the most essential extension to have installed. It blocks all adverts across websites you visit, making your browsing experience smoother and less intrusive. Recently, YouTube has become more aggressive in attempting to counter ad blockers, but for now, uBlock appears to be prevailing. Personally, I don't feel guilty for using an ad blocker because, without it, YouTube frequently serves ads for dubious financial products or misrepresented mobile applications. These ads are neither relevant nor accurately portrayed, making uBlock Origin a crucial tool in avoiding such content.

Sponsor Block

• Chrome Extension
• Firefox Add-On
• GitHub Repo

While uBlock Origin effectively blocks ads served by YouTube, there are also ads integrated directly into the content by creators. Sponsor Block is a community-driven extension that automatically skips these sponsored segments, as well as pre-rolls, intros, and outros, in YouTube videos. It relies on crowdsourced data to identify and skip sponsorships, ads, and product placements, providing a seamless viewing experience.

Sponsor Block is highly customizable, allowing you to adjust skip settings based on your preferences. It conveniently tracks the time you save by using the extension, and in my case, I've saved almost 1 day and 16 hours.

Return YouTube Dislikes

• Chrome Extension
• Firefox Add-On
• Return YouTube Dislikes website

In 2021, YouTube removed the visible dislike count on videos. Unfortunately, the dislike count is a valuable tool for viewers to quickly gauge the quality of a video. For example, if I'm watching a software engineering tutorial or a DIY guide with a high dislike count, I can quickly determine that the video may not be worth my time. This extension restores an estimated dislike count to videos, allowing viewers to make more informed decisions.

Based on the below image YouTube rewind 2018 was a great success and received 3.1 million likes...

However with the extension Return YouTube Dislikes turned on we can see the dislike count is at 20M for YouTube a dislike % of ~85%.

BlockTube

• Chrome Extension
• Firefox Add-On
• GitHub Repo

BlockTube is my favourite YouTube extension. I discovered it after realising that YouTube's "Not interested in this video" button was largely ineffective; videos I had explicitly dismissed would still appear in my feed. Subscribed to hundreds of channels, many posting daily, I found it increasingly difficult to surface the small percentage of videos I actually want to watch. BlockTube solves this by allowing me to block specific videos or entire channels from appearing anywhere on YouTube with just a couple of clicks.

My subscription feed without BlockTube, three rows of content taken up by videos from the last 3 hours.

With BlockTube enabled, the same feed shows content from 3 weeks ago and a small scroll reveals videos from 3 months ago.

Advanced Mode

Where BlockTube really shines is its advanced mode, which allows you to programmatically filter content by writing custom JavaScript. The extension provides access to video and channel objects, enabling precise filtering based on your own criteria.

Over time I have built a fairly comprehensive filter that automatically removes content I'm not interested in. The approach is data-driven: I define per-channel block lists and allow lists, then a single filter function evaluates every video against these rules. Here is a condensed excerpt:

1const channelLists = [
2  {
3    channel: /\bsky sports premier league\b/,
4    blockList: ['soccer saturday', 'quiz', 'darts', 'transfer', 'sticker book', 'beat the clock', ...pundits],
5    allowList: ['gary neville podcast'],
6  },
7  {
8    channel: /\bufc\b/,
9    blockList: ['press conference', 'ufc unfiltered', 'weigh-ins', 'embedded', 'contender series', 'power slap'],
10    allowList: [],
11  },
12  {
13    channel: /\bchess.com\b/,
14    blockList: ['titled tuesday', 'pogchamps', 'speed chess championship', 'tier list', 'quiz', /challenge/, /q&a/],
15    allowList: [],
16  },
17];
18
19// The filter function evaluates every video against these rules
20(video, object) => {
21  const videoTitleLower = video.title?.toLowerCase();
22  const channelTitleLower = video.channelName?.toLowerCase();
23
24  for (const rule of channelLists) {
25    const channelMatch =
26      typeof rule.channel === 'string' ? rule.channel === channelTitleLower : rule.channel.test(channelTitleLower);
27
28    if (!channelMatch) continue;
29
30    for (const allowed of rule.allowList) {
31      if (videoTitleLower?.includes(allowed)) return false;
32    }
33
34    for (const blocked of rule.blockList) {
35      const match = typeof blocked === 'string' ? videoTitleLower?.includes(blocked) : blocked.test(videoTitleLower);
36      if (match) return true;
37    }
38  }
39
40  return false;
41};
42

The full filter covers over 30 channels with hundreds of blocked terms, automatically removing livestreams, premieres, and content that doesn't match my interests, all without ever needing to click "Not interested" again.

Google Gemini

Google Gemini

Unlike the other tools mentioned, Google Gemini is not a browser extension. It's Google's AI chat service, similar to ChatGPT, and integrates seamlessly with YouTube due to Google's ownership of both. I use Gemini to quickly summarize videos I'm unsure about watching. For instance, if a 20-minute video by Tim Corey is irrelevant to me based on the Gemini summary, I can promptly use BlockTube to block the video and remove it from my subscription feed.