The 5 Best Browser Extensions for YouTube You Didn’t Know You Needed

Like many other chronically connected internet users, you’re probably on YouTube at least once a day. Maybe you’re looking for the best accessories for your iPad. Or maybe you just want to pass the time by watching mukbang videos. Either way, YouTube has become part of your daily routine. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you enjoy every second of it.

Sure, YouTube has some powerful features, but it doesn’t have all the customization settings you need to improve your viewing experience. There are no options to speed up a video beyond four times the original, remove boring elements from the homepage, or transform the content into something more cinematic. Luckily, some developers had the same ideas and created awesome browser extensions for YouTube.

These extensions add advanced features to YouTube to make it behave more the way you want it to. To get started, here are five of the best YouTube browser extensions to install today.

ImprovementdTube is an open-source Chrome extension, which means it’s completely free, with no subscription or even one-time payment required. True to its name, it’s designed to improve the way you use YouTube. For example, it allows you to control the YouTube player and playlist. You are free to configure the player to automatically pause whenever you exit the tab, stop short videos from auto-looping, and force the player to display a video at a specific resolution. For the playlist, you can choose to play it in reverse or in shuffle mode.

ImprovementdTube also adds a handy toolbar below each video. This has four nifty one-click shortcuts: Copy to copy the video transcript, Key Scene to jump to a key scene in the video, Screen Capture to take a screenshot of the current frame, and Loop to loop the video. If you are an experienced keyboard user and prefer to control YouTube with keyboard shortcuts, you can assign some of them to basic YouTube functionality. Another thing you might like about ImprovedTube is that it can block channels and videos, a feature that YouTube doesn’t support natively.

In addition to improving the functionality of YouTube, this browser extension also allows you to change the appearance of YouTube. If the main video page doesn’t work for you, you can rearrange its elements, for example by moving the sidebar to the left and switching the header to the video. There’s also a nifty switcher to toggle between dark and light mode, as well as a Themes section for changing the background of the YouTube website and extension menu.

If you’re not a fan of YouTube’s default interface, one of the free browser extensions you should always install first is Unhook. Unhook supports removing many YouTube elements to give it a clean and minimalist look. For example, the extension can completely hide videos on the home feed. What you’ll see instead is a blank screen, with the side panel on the left and the search bar at the top. This means videos will only appear when you search, making YouTube viewing more intentional.

Unhook can also customize your video sidebar. You have the option to hide recommended videos, playlist, live chat, and fundraiser that appear to the left of the current video. Or you can simply hide the entire video sidebar so that your video takes up the entire width of the screen. If you also want to maximize the height of the video display, there is also a setting in Unhook to remove the top header where the search bar is located. If the video information page is also distracting to you, Unhook can help you hide it. You can individually clear the button bar (like, dislike, share, save), channel name and description, or just hide everything in the video info page. Other items that Unhook can remove include comments, end screen cards, and mixes. When you want to go back to the default YouTube interface, there is an option to turn off dropout.

While Unhook isn’t the only browser extension for customizing YouTube, it makes the process faster and less complicated than many other options. You get a simple, single list of everything you can hide or show on the YouTube interface – no confusing menus or categories to dig into.

SponsorBlock solves one of the biggest problems users have with YouTube videos: sponsorship. Unlike traditional ads, sponsorships are integrated into the video itself, so you have no choice but to skip them manually. This usually requires some trial and error, as you might move too far into the video and miss some important segments or stop dead in your tracks and have to sit through part of the sponsorship. Instead of going through all this hassle, SponsorBlock automatically jumps for you.

If the video you are watching contains a sponsorship, you will see a segment highlighted in green in the search bar. When you get to this part of the video, SponsorBlock will skip to the end of the sponsorship. Your viewing session is not interrupted in any way and you only see the important parts of the video. Beyond sponsorships, SponsorBlock can skip self-promotion, subscription reminders, intro animation, end cards, preview, greetings, and tangential scenes or jokes. Each of these segments appears in a different color on the search bar to help you distinguish them. For example, the self-promotion is yellow, the end cards are royal blue, the subscription reminder is hot pink, and the intro animation is teal.

In addition to ignoring sponsorships, SponsorBlock lets you control how you watch the video using keyboard shortcuts. You can move to the next or previous chapter with Ctrl + right/left arrow, move to highlights with Ctrl + Enter, and manually skip a segment with Enter. You can also customize keyboard shortcuts to your liking.

Arguably one of the best features of YouTube Premium that you should take advantage of is the quadruple speed option. You might not always need it, but when you want to breeze through those slow-paced tutorials or turn an hour-long vlog into a 15-minute training session, you’d be happy to have the option to speed up the content just as much. If four times speed still isn’t fast enough for you, check out Video Speed ​​Controller.

This browser extension allows you to control the YouTube video speed from 0.07 times to 16 times the original speed. And unlike the original YouTube Speed ​​Controller which is buried in the settings, Video Speed ​​Controller conveniently embeds a mini controller in the upper left corner of the current video. This is where you can click the plus or minus button to increase or decrease the speed by 0.1 steps. It also comes with fast forward and rewind buttons, so you can quickly jump straight to what you want to watch.

If the single-step increase is too much for you, you can instead access the Video Speed ​​Controller panel from the Extensions toolbar. This displays eight preset speed multipliers: 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2, and 2.5. Simply click on the speed of your choice to apply it automatically. In addition to clicking one of the on-screen controllers, Video Speed ​​Controller also allows you to change the speed of the current YouTube video with single-letter keyboard shortcuts. For example, pressing S will reduce the speed multiplier by 0.1, and pressing Z will rewind the video ten seconds. You can even set a shortcut for your preferred speed.

Watching YouTube videos isn’t exactly the definition of cinematic, but if it’s something you’d like to experience, there’s always the option of installing the browser extension called Turn Off the Lights. Yes, it does exactly what its name suggests. It darkens the rest of the YouTube interface to make the current video stand out – in the same way that turning off the lights in a room makes the TV stand out. All it takes is a single click on the Turn off lights icon in the extension’s toolbar. Tap it once to darken everything around the video, and tap it again to return it to normal.

Although this browser extension seems quite simple, it actually offers many customization options and settings to further improve your experience. For one, you can set the rest of the page to be blurry. This makes the video even more visible. There’s also a setting to turn the lights on or off automatically when you play or pause a video, and to keep certain elements on like the channel name, info bar, and like bar.

Another cool feature of Turn Off the Lights is its visual effects. It adds ambient lighting around the video to make it even more immersive. This glow effect can be a single color, four custom colors, or the colors in the video. When you watch the video, you’ll see the color dynamically change around it, like how some screen-reactive LED lights for TV would work in real life.