The Best Browser Extensions to Get More Out of YouTube
Wedding speeches to music videos, from DIY tutorials to movie clips, from celebrity interviews to wilderness adventures, it’s all on YouTube. According to official YouTube figures, more than 20 million videos are uploaded to the platform every day.
Over the years, YouTube has added many additional features to improve its users’ viewing experience, but you can make it even better with some well-chosen browser extensions. No matter how you use YouTube, you should be able to benefit from something here.
Here we focused on extensions for Google Chrome, which should also work on Microsoft Edge and any other Chromium-based browser (including Opera and Vivaldi). We will also avoid extensions based primarily on ad blocking, in the spirit of supporting content creators on YouTube.
Improve YouTube
Enhance YouTube is one of the most comprehensive and oldest YouTube extensions, and it brings a ton of features. For starters, you can use it to change the appearance of the YouTube site in different ways: hide the sidebar or video thumbnails for a cleaner look, for example, or change the color of the progress bar and other elements.
Other tweaks you can apply include new tabs for search results (so you can find new videos without losing your place in the current video), the option to hide YouTube shorts, and a reverse option for your playlists. You can also pause videos when you switch tabs and use the extension to set up custom keyboard shortcuts. There are many here.
Optimizer for YouTube
This is another expansion with a lot of strings to its bow. Enhancer for YouTube gives you quick and easy access to playback speed, quality, and volume, plus more granular control over videos than built-in YouTube options. The extension can also transform the look of YouTube with custom themes, like a bespoke dark mode look that offers dozens of variations.
