Notice: You have been identified as a bot, so no internal UID will be assigned to you. If you are a real person messing with your useragent, you should change it back to something normal.
channels. Youtube is pretty much unbrowsable on a computer without a lot of help from software that can customize it. Certainly, the advertising can get pretty awful, and that's the first thing people try to fix about youtube. Anyone here who regularly uses youtube probably already using some kind of blocker for that. There are a great many choices of software for that, with the option of being independent of your browser versus added onto your browser as an extension. Two famous choices are uBlock Origin and AdGuard Adblocker.
Beyond the advertising, there is an awful lot that can be changed about youtube through a huge number of browser extensions. I'll begin by recommending Tweaks for YouTube. With that extension on Firefox, some of the things that I have changed are: specifying how many thumbnails are listed per row, keeping a thin red progress bar at the bottom at all times (you can change the coloar), hiding the player controls excepting mouseover, autoplay off, removal of several items that overlay the video (cards, channel watermark), removal of some control buttons (previous, next, miniplayer), stop thumbnail hover preview, remove voice search button, show current time/duration during playback, and so on. There is a huge list of other options. Regardless, there are a couple of things to handle that still require other extensions that I'll describe later.
BlackNorthernEuropean joined in and replied with this 3 weeks ago, 1 hour later, 11 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,410,310
@previous (C)
My guy, you could simply squirt in your mouth with the urine that came out your penis, record that, and post it on the internet. Making money isn’t hard. Black people are very hard. That’s not the point. The point is you’re not.
boof (OP) double-posted this 3 weeks ago, 11 hours later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,410,358
Besides Tweaks for YouTube, other extensions with a lot of settings that I found for Firefox are Improve YouTube and Control Panel for YouTube. I have not tested those out. There is another multisetting extension called Filtertube that I'll describe later.
One thing that Tweaks for YouTube was not handling as it should is the removal of Shorts, as from YouTube search results. So, I looked at many extensions that handle Shorts only. The one that I decided to keep is Hide Shorts for Youtube. Unlike the other choices, it allows tweaks of Shorts in different parts of YouTube. Here are other extensions that I tried for getting rid of Shorts:
boof (OP) replied with this 3 weeks ago, 10 hours later, 2 days after the original post[^][v]#1,410,635
more on the Shorts
There are some multifunctional extensions that are supposed to give the option to get rid of shorts, among the many other settings they have.
FilterTube is a nice looking thing, but I had to fiddle it a bit. FilterTube did not work until I rightclicked on its button and chose "Always allow on youtube.com". Alternatively, it works to go to Firefox's Extensions area, click to see FilterTube management, click Permissions on FiterTube's setttings page in Firefox's Extensions area, and click the toggle switch for "Access your data for sites in the *://youtube.com domain".
YouTube Video Blocker also works to hide Shorts (fails at channel blocking though, its principal supposed feature).
Multifunctional extensions that did not work to hide Shorts: Improve YouTube, UnTrap for YouTube
Control Panel for YouTube claims to block Shorts, but I could not test it with my version of Firefox (newer needed).
boof (OP) double-posted this 3 weeks ago, 1 day later, 4 days after the original post[^][v]#1,410,973
Another valuable way to adjust youtube is to block channels. Maybe you hate seeing some popular open mouth face guy in your video listings, and you'd like to block the channel. There are a handful of browser extensions that let you do that.
works: YouTube Channel Blocker (by ASK_Studio), Framedrop - YouTube Channel Blocker, FilterTube
I will describe how to use them later.
AdGuard AdBlocker, uBlock Origin, and similar software can also be used to block channels -- I'll describe how later.
does not work: BlockTube, Channel Blocker, Channel Blocker Plus, YouTube Channel Blocker/Hider, YouTube Channel Blocker (by Jannis), Video Blocker (by Firefox user 6112461)
YouTube Video Blocker works inconstistently, and the rightclick method to block does not work.
Also, there are multifunctional extensions that claim to block channels, but in fact, do not work: Improve YouTube, UnTrap for YouTube
The multifunctional Control Panel for YouTube claims to block channels, but I could not test with my version of Firefox (newer needed).
boof (OP) triple-posted this 3 weeks ago, 1 day later, 5 days after the original post[^][v]#1,411,276
OK, now detail about the channel blocker that works the best for me: FilterTube.
As mentioned earlier, it is a multifunctional extension with many settings, including the blocking of Shorts. To use FilterTube to block channels, you can click any listed video's thumbnail's three-dots button, and click the top row of the menu that appears (it says Block there). Alternatively, you can click the toolbar button for FilterTube (it looks like a funnel), click the word Channels, and type in any channel name, @handle thing that appears in the channel's URL, or channel ID code. There are a great many other settings available to see when you click the little box thingy to the right of the word Channels. At the top of that list, you see you can block Shorts.
boof (OP) quadruple-posted this 3 weeks ago, 23 hours later, 6 days after the original post[^][v]#1,411,503
Now how to use YouTube Channel Blocker (by ASK_Studio). It puts horrible red Xs everywhere that you can click to block a channel. Alternatively, you can click the extension's button and type in channel names yourself. I found the red Xs so obnoxious that I came up with lines to put in userContent.css to size and coloar them as I pleased. Size the font setting to zero to eliminate, and set margin-right to -8 to remove gaps left behind. For how using userContent.css works, see my thread https://minichan.net/topic/127266
boof (OP) double-posted this 2 weeks ago, 10 hours later, 1 week after the original post[^][v]#1,411,756
Alright, as for Framedrop - YouTube Channel Blocker, to block channels, there are obnoxious buttons on video thumbnail areas on search results pages and right side of play video pages. The buttons are missing when on the home YouTube page. Besides the obnoxious buttons, channels can be blocked by typing their names in a text box below the words Manage Lists, where it says "Add channel", on Framedrop's settings page (click the Framedrop toolbar button to get there). The userContent.css lines to get rid of the buttons:
boof (OP) triple-posted this 2 weeks ago, 22 hours later, 1 week after the original post[^][v]#1,411,882
I'll say more about an extension in the "does not work" list, YouTube Channel Blocker/Hider. To use it, enter the channel's name as it appears under any of its video titles in listings of video thumbails. There are no buttons or menu methods. It blocks channels too aggressively, as any channel whose name anywhere contains the same text as the name of the intended channel will also get blocked.
boof (OP) quadruple-posted this 2 weeks ago, 1 hour later, 1 week after the original post[^][v]#1,411,895
OK, on to blocking channels with the more general blocking software such as uBlock Origin and AdGuard AdBlock. They allow user-set rules for pattern matching parts of web pages and removing them. From what I have seen, the syntax for the rules is similar across the different software, though not necessarily the same. There can also be more than one way to construct a rule to do a particular job.
AdGuard AdBlocker
Let's say that you want to block three channels whose videos are listed under the channel names ClangersTV, Forbes Clips, and Dr. Todd Grande. A user rule that does the job is:
youtube.com## :is(ytd-rich-item-renderer, ytd-video-renderer, ytd-compact-video-renderer) :has(:contains(/^ClangersTV$|^Forbes Clips$|^Dr\. Todd Grande$/))
Alternatively, let's say that you would like to block the channels according to the parts of their URLs:
youtube.com## :is(ytd-rich-item-renderer, ytd-video-renderer, ytd-compact-video-renderer) :has(:is([href="/@ClangersTV"], [href="/@ForbesClips"], [href="/@DrGrande"]))
boof (OP) quintuple-posted this 2 weeks ago, 13 hours later, 1 week after the original post[^][v]#1,411,962
The syntax in the previous reply is for what is called a cosmetic rule: https://adguard.com/kb/general/ad-filtering/create-own-filters/#cosmetic-rule
The syntax :is(), :has(), and :contains() are called pseudo classes: https://adguard.com/kb/general/ad-filtering/create-own-filters/#extended-css-selectors
So, what the syntax is doing is applying a cosmetic rule to pages based on youtube.com. More specifically, blocks of html that are identified by any of ytd-rich-item-renderer, ytd-video-renderer, or ytd-compact-video-renderer are cut out if they have any elements that contain any of the channel names listed in /^ClangersTV$|^Forbes Clips$|^Dr\. Todd Grande$/, or alternatively if they have any elements that have anything set to any of the channel URL parts listed in [href="/@ClangersTV"], [href="/@ForbesClips"], [href="/@DrGrande"].
The syntax /^ClangersTV$|^Forbes Clips$|^Dr\. Todd Grande$/ is in the form of what is called a regular expression, also known as regex. The expression is contained with forward slashes / / to signal to AdGuard that it is a regular expression. The pipes | are for what is called a disjunction, which means you can list different patterns for matching and separate them with logical OR as represented by the pipes. Each channel name is contained within ^ and $, which indicate start and end of the string to match. The backslash \ preceding the dot in Dr\. Todd Grande is what is called the escape character for regular expressions. The dot would not be recognized as a literal dot unless it was "escaped" by the escape character, because dots mean a wildcard character (could be anything) in regular expressions. Channel names don't usually have characters that need escaping, but in case you encounter any that do, here is a reference to possible such characters: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/20804/in-a-regular-expression-which-characters-need-escaping
Basic Regular Expressions (BRE) -- Special characters: .[\ -- Special in some contexts: *^$
Extended Regular Expressions (ERE) -- Special characters: .[\( -- Special in some contexts: *^$+?{|
I have found that I can simplify the first AdGuard rule a bit:
youtube.com## :is(ytd-rich-item-renderer, ytd-video-renderer, ytd-compact-video-renderer) :has(:contains(/^(ClangersTV|Forbes Clips|Dr\. Todd Grande)$/))
The ^ and $ are only needed once if we put them outside of parentheses () that contain the channel names. In regular expressions, parentheses define what is called a capturing group, by the way.
boof (OP) septuple-posted this 3 days ago, 2 weeks later, 3 weeks after the original post[^][v]#1,415,275
I have an AdGuard user rule that eliminates a youtube annoyance. For the past few months, when you mouse over thumbnails on the main page, their backgrounds get coloared up in an animated way. Since I hate that kind of nonsense, I looked for a way to stop that. Here it is:
youtube.com## .yt-spec-touch-feedback-shape
Alternatively, if you use a userContent.css file, insert these lines:
.yt-spec-touch-feedback-shape__hover-effect {
background: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0) !important;
}