Show HN: Control Panel for YouTube | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Control Panel for YouTube

111 pointsinsin51 comments

Hi HN,

I recently released a new browser extension for YouTube, which in addition to the table stakes of hiding the existence of Shorts, hiding promoted content, automatically skipping ads, hiding useless/unused UI elements, hiding unwanted channels YouTube keeps recommending to you, letting you hide algorithmic suggestions etc. etc., makes other changes I've always wanted as a user, in the same vein as one of my other extensions, Control Panel for Twitter.

The most significant of those is attempting to make your Subscriptions page more like an Inbox, by hiding videos you've already watched (with a configurable watch %), videos you're never going to watch (like live streams and multi-hour stream VODs - if you follow any gaming channels which started co-streaming to YouTube after a recent Twitch policy change), videos you literally can't watch (Upcoming), and improving the handling of videos hidden using YouTube's built-in Hide functionality, then finally filling in the gaps created by all those hidden videos, so unwatched content you're interested in (since you didn't Hide it yet!) floats to the top of your Subscriptions.

Desktop and mobile versions of YouTube are both supported, with some version-specific features, e.g. it significantly improves the Subscriptions and Search page layout when doing some comfy-mode browsing of the mobile version on an iPad or other tablet in portrait mode (unfortunately the iOS version is still stuck in App Review limbo, despite the macOS version - which contains the exact same web extension code - being approved on initial submission almost 2 weeks ago).

Part of the reason for finally making this (I've been meaning to improve the Subscriptions page for ages) was YouTube starting to go after uBlock Origin, which I can now disable on YouTube if it becomes necessary, without seeing any promoted content or ads.

Website: https://jbscript.dev/control-panel-for-youtube

Source: https://github.com/insin/control-panel-for-youtube

Taking a look at it now, and how it interacts with Enhancer for Youtube.

The one thing I'm absolutely desperate for, is a fix to Youtube's Watch Later playlist issues.

If you ever hit maximum on it, it seems permanently broken afterward to not delete watched videos- which means the only way to delete videos is manually, behind a 3-dot menu per video. Since the playlist max size is 5000, that'd be a minimum 10,000 clicks, and since the 3 dot menu only shows up once you're over a video, a certain level of hunting too.

I tried to make an extension for this once, but bungled it pretty bad so it'll take another effort sometime. Youtube's my primary content source outside of games, so for me it hurts pretty bad.

I would love better playlist controls for Youtube. I do a lot of playlist shaping and even their web interface is broken -- for instance, if you have a playlist with 100 items on it and you drag-n-drop to re-order, the visual order doesn't match the saved playlist order. I then re-load the playlist and have to scroll back down.

I'd also like to shuffle certain playlists, not in playback, but the way it's stored.

There is a "Removed watched videos" option in the three-dot-menu for the playlist itself on desktop at least. I have to do this every so often, and this is a very welcome feature as I used to do it as you describe.

Yeah, that's literally what I'm talking about being broken. It hasn't worked for me for over 2 years.

My pet peeve is that if you start playing a video by clicking on it in the watch later playlist it will start wherever you left off, but then if you let it proceed to the next video it will start at the beginning of that one, forever erasing your watch position for that video.

In general the saving of watch position is very frustrating on YouTube. There are a lot of bugs. They need an explicit way to see exactly which parts you've watched.

Has anyone made a "watch later" queue that is site-agnostic? I'd love to be able to add Twitter videos, Spotify podcasts, YouTube clips, etc to a single "watch later" queue.

Honest question: Do you ever actually watch them later? I've been bookmarking things on the internet to Read Later (TM) for 26 years. I might bookmark multiple things in a day. The Later never comes - and often the link rots in just a decade or two.

I've recently begun using Ctrl-W to mark items to Read Later. It saves some disk space at the very least, and frustration years down the line at the very most.

Yes, I watch about half of them. Usually while doing the dishes or working out. Mostly listening, as I usually save interviews or lectures or podcasts. I never read the things I bookmark for later reading, but I have extra time to listen to things.

might just consider caching them to a thrash-drive with yt-dlp and one of those browser-exntensions that caches a webpage for offline use; then watch later without linkrot, ect can even throw that behing something as simple as darkhttp and serve it to your tablets easier too

but of course the downside is the required regular spring cleaning

having an AIO system for that would be pretty nice though

Linkrot isn't that big of an issue for the stuff I save. I'm fine watching/listening on the web, I just wish there was a way to make a playlist that works over multiple sites. Really it should be a browser feature, part of the bookmarks manager, if browsers were still innovating.

My primary YouTube experience is:

a) Browse when I have a few minutes, and add interesting videos to Watch Later

b) Watch them in the evening when my family has gone to bed.

I don't watch everything the same day, so over time it builds up. Sometimes I have more time, so I catch up then. I try to keep it less than 50 items, and if it ever goes over I'll prune it.

I rarely watch movies or TV shows - I watch YouTube.

> I rarely watch movies or TV shows - I watch YouTube.

Same here. For all its faults—the search function is my personal peeve—it has really turned into a fantastic platform. By allowing anyone to upload videos of any length, giving those videos permanent URLs, and enabling people to make money from their videos, they have encouraged a wealth of content creation on every topic under the sun.

I wish YouTube had a dozen strong competitors, though. Too many valuable eggs are being entrusted to that one basket.

My solution is to clean things up on mobile. Swipe and click delete is a lot easier than that 3-dot menu, but still no bulk options.

I cant fathom why you'd let that list get so long... I tend to max it out at about a dozen.

but

also any video that you mark as watch later, but then gets pulled... its hidden and messes with the play list order. you have to go find the menu option that shows hidden videos so you can remove them from the list manually before the list will start to behave

Run this on your Watch Later page in your console:

let x = $x;

let buttons = $$('div#contents div#contents div#menu button');

let delay = 1000;

for (let i = 0; i < buttons.length; i++) {

  setTimeout(() => buttons[i].click(), 100+(i*delay));

  setTimeout(() => x("//span[contains(text(), 'Remove')]")[0].click(), 800+(i*delay));

};

...increase delay if needed.

Can I hide all videos with “Minecraft” in the title?

Or anything that references MrBeast?

Just hit “not interested” on those, the YouTube algorithm is really good at not showing you stuff you tell it not to

but I want it to hide on the client side.

Out of curiosity, why?

I’m not OP but I use YouTube a lot. I would assume two reasons:

Some people would rather scalp themselves than create a google account (valid)

Even when logged in and using the “Not interested” or the “don’t recommend channel” button, YouTube will sometimes straight up ignore you.

The issue is that there’s an infinite number of channels that do Minecraft videos.

It’s like playing whack-a-trying to hide all the Minecraft channels.

I want to hide the topic, not an individual channel.

There are two options. "Not interested" nudges the algorithm away from the topic while "Don't recommend <type> from this channel" immediately hides the channel from recommendations.

If your nudges don't feel effective enough, you can also manage your view history. Removing any Minecraft videos you may have accidentally watched from your history will help hide them from future recommendations.

I’ve tried all of the above and Minecraft keeps coming up.

I think the engagement numbers are tracked per user, and that’s what they recommend off of. Data outside the scope of the listed user history.

It’s insanity. And infuriating.

I want a diverse set of recommendations, not another 1,000 Minecraft videos.

File feedback in the app. My understanding is that people in charge of the recommendation system actually look at it and try to use it to make the system better.

And reaction videos?

I want a script which hides all videos which have a thumbnail of a person with their mouth open. Way too many creators have been using that now a days.

I use this, which uses crowd sourced thumbnails from within the video https://dearrow.ajay.app works really well. Made by the dev that made SponsorBlock

I use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem... - it replaces thumbnail with a frame from the video.

A dumb thumbnail is a useful signal to know that I won’t want to watch the video anyway :)

As annoying as it is, I remember a channel I subscribed to once mentioned that they did a little AB experimentation and turns out “surprised face” thumbnails do actually attract more views.

I don't doubt that at all. But that's turned into way too many creators using it as the default expression in every thumbnail. I remember visiting a true crime channel and all their videos had the same face....

Linus (of Linus Tech Tips) said pretty much that. They do the "OMG" face for a day or two, and then switch to a less annoying thumbnail.

Understandable but unbearable: these aren’t mutually exclusive.

That's a planned feature [1] - we'll probably add a new item to video menus which lets you flag a channel for reaction faces, then replace their thumbnails with another frame from the video

[1] https://github.com/insin/control-panel-for-youtube/issues/19

Am I on a different YouTube than yours? Or perhaps the algorithm is working well. I rarely see them.

btw, instead of doing all of those, isn't it just a straight forward thing to, say, just create good content -- it will start paying off way better off in longer term, if not immediately?

It's not one or the other. You can create great content for retention and still use clickbait to get 10x more clicks.

or ANY youtube shorts?

Dear god. This.

This is already a feature, enabled by default.

I missed a few issues with certain options while developing it because it never occurred to me not to have Shorts hidden all the time.

omg, AND you let me hide "Mixes" i wish i could do these things to the android client as well!

I use uBlock Origin for hiding shorts:

  youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer:has(.ytd-reel-shelf-renderer:has-text(Shorts))

I would love a feature that if I change the speed on a video, the setting sticks across all videos on that specific channel.

Yes, please!!! ^^^

Thanks for the feedback and feature requests, I've added them as enhancements for upcoming versions, feel free to add your own here:

https://github.com/insin/control-panel-for-youtube/issues

I also have a Hacker News extension if you've ever wanted to be able to easily follow new comments on stories over time, and stop accidentally flagging/hiding stories while scrolling on mobile:

https://jbscript.dev/comments-owl-for-hacker-news

I needed to do this to make the plugin work after purchasing it through the App Store on OS X:

1. Restart Safari

2. Activate the plugin

3. Add the button to the toolbar and click it once

Only after this did it function. You also need to open the plugin options from your Safari preferences to see all options, they will be cut off if you click the toolbar icon.

To the creator: Congratulations on making a very cool plugin! It fixes all of the worst annoyances of YouTube, meaning that I can start using the website instead of FreeTube and thus distribute my juicy subscription money to the creators I watch.

Both of the FAQs currently on the site are variations on "why does it not work in Safari?" (extensions won't run in PWAs saved to your home screen either, you have to manually create your own Shortcut if you want a home screen bookmark to open YouTube with the extension active), it also has a video example of enabling the extension:

https://jbscript.dev/control-panel-for-youtube#safari-faq-po...

The most recent Firefox version of the extension actually reverted it from MV3 to MV2 because Firefox doesn't prompt you for permissions on install either for MV3 extensions, so it was also disabled by default.

Turning off video history will disable recommendations and shorts which improves my experience. An extension like this is right up my alley.

I like it in general, but by default it also hides the play control on videos (at least, live streams) which is a problem. I had to stop the video to change the screen size, adjust volume, turn captions on/off etc.

Looks pretty useful!

Does it have the option to automatically make the player full size? YT defaults to the smaller one with related stuff on the right which is always annoying.

Your links are down within a day?!

Why is this post greyed out

OP text is always grey.

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