YouTube Extensions for Creators

1.  Karamel

Karamel is an open-source extension that gives you the option to select your comment section, with either YouTube or Reddit. In addition to that, you can access all the subs the video was posted on, in the comment window with the same Reddit UI. In case you want to sort comments you can do that in settings and separate them by best, top, controversial or old. For example, Linus Tech Tips’s video Mac vs PC video editing. While comments on YouTube were rather general, Redditors made it a bit more informative. Here is a picture comparison for better clarity.

This extension also lets you reply, upvote, save comments in the Reddit section as well only when you’re logged in Reddit in your browser. Of-course it only shows the comment section for videos that have been posted on Reddit so chances are, you’ll find a lot of videos that won’t support this. Get Karamel here. 

2. Tune

There is so much toxicity on the Internet and a lot of responses we read are full of cuss words or aimed at harassing someone. So, if you want a clean comment section space across platforms then you surely need to try this. Tune, functions with a volume control knob that basically goes from hiding most of the profane comments to not hiding anything at all. Currently, it’s available on YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and includes a few other publisher websites. You must mind that this is an experimental extension. So it might not block all insulting or profane comments. It’s open-source so you can explore the code as well. One limitation for people speaking a different language is that it currently just supports English. Created by Jigsaw and Google’s counter abuse technology team, try it out if you don’t want your social space to be toxic. Get Tune here. 

3. Music Mode

Music Mode is a minimal and simple extension. It’s for people like me who use YouTube mostly for music consumption. It works by redirecting all the YouTube links to another browser tab which is minimal and just sports a music player with the thumbnail. That’s it. The only caveat is the lack of autoplay. For instance, if I’m playing a playlist, the extension did not automatically switch to the next song. I’ve to do it manually. Let’s hope the dev finds a way out out of it in the next update. Alternatively, you can control your playlist from another tab using this Chrome flag hack.

In case you want to see the actual YouTube video page you can simple disable the extension by clicking on the Music Mode toggle present in the extension icon on Chrome’s Menu. Get Music Mode here. 

4. Magic Enhancer

Magic Enhancer gives you quick controls on YouTube. There are four modes starting with hide,  which hides all the video suggestions, comments and just displays the video screen. The cinema mode does the same but with a darker cast on the entire screen so you can also see other sections that are on the page. You can also capture the screen with the capture button.

In case you want to tweak your experience more, which I’m sure you’d love to, you can use the extension settings. You can disable the enhancement buttons, block ads and enable the dark theme. YouTube mostly adjusts the video quality with the internet speed, but you can pre-define the quality you want every video to buffer at and also the player size. Oh! In case you want to play around, you can also change the progress bar’s color as well. Mine is yellow! Get Magic Enhancer here. 

5. Click Bait Remover

Have you ever found yourself searching for a movie but when you actually play it, you just find a static picture on for two hours? I have, and it’s disappointing.

I totally blame the use of custom thumbnails on YouTube but with this extension, you can escape this loop of click-bait easily. It works on any YouTube page be it the home screen or suggestions. You can set where do you want the thumbnail to be picked from, which is the start, middle or end of the video. There is also an option to change video titles to lowercase or first letter capitalization. Get Click-bait Remover here.

6. Rabbit Hole

YouTube is all about algorithms, suggestions, recommendations, trends, and comments. Often so many options get us to waste a lot of time viewing and exploring things we didn’t intend to watch. Rabbit Hole removes all of these distractions and replaces them with a rabbit.

YouTube’s home page is the first place I see recommendations on and that’s when I start to waste time. With Rabbit Hole, you can hide the home page (like in the picture above) and hide the sidebar. You can also hide comments including live stream chats. One issue I noticed is that it doesn’t let you escape banner ads that pop in the video although it claims to block it.  I hope you don’t go down the rabbit hole again! Get Rabbit Hole here. 

7. PocketTube, Subscription Manager

We all subscribe to channels and videos but these days, YouTube is all about video recommendation on your home screen. PocketTube fills this void and manages all your subscriptions in one place. You can group them together according to a certain type to have a more organized list of subscriptions. As soon as you install PocketTube, a “subscription groups” section pops up where you can add custom groups. When you click on the text, it opens up another page that displays all your subscriptions and your groups. One option is to add your subscriptions to groups right from the channel or by dragging and dropping it from the manager window into groups.

It shows you all the videos from a specific creator when you click on the icon. You can also customize the search with filters like date published, subscriber count, alphabetical or custom order. There is an option to add custom icons to groups in addition to syncing it across all the platforms if you’re signed in Chrome. It’s available on Firefox browser and you can download it on both iOS and Android. Get PocketTube here.

Closing Words

I use all the apps above and it just adds so much to my YouTube experience. I can eliminate click-baits and recommendations, change the thumbnail, choose between cinema mode or normal and apply dark theme. For creators, vidIQ is a powerful tool that lets you keep track of most of the things that you require to make your channel grow. From playing videos in an audio player to managing profane comments, you sure have a lot of options to personalize YouTube and I discussed just a  few of them. If you have an extension you can’t live without tell me in the comments section below.