for the longest time the annotations switch in the settings menu existed, up until like 2018 i wanna say? They removed annotations in 2016 iirc, may have been 2018, and i’m fuzzing the years, it’s been a hot while give me some slack.
Thankfully there are better frontends for many social media sites. For YouTube, you can use Piped and Invidious. LibRedirect is a browser addon that automatically redirects all YouTube links to your selected frontend. If you want a native desktop app, check out FreeTube. On Android you can use LibreTube, NewPipe or a fork of it called Tubular. On iOS, you can configure Yattee to work with Piped and Invidious, this guide explains it: gonzoknows.com/posts/yattee/.
Doesn’t piped completely remove the tracking and what not? Which… I know it sounds bad but I want that. YouTube’s algorithm honestly gives me some really cool shit based on what I’ve watched
Without tracking, it recommends stuff based on the current video. No idea how different the results might be if you have whole history for them to evaluate
On Android, there’s also ReVanced which lets you apply patches to a bunch of apps, not just YouTube. Unlike some other ways of patching apps (like Magisk modules), ReVanced doesn’t need root since it patches the APK before you install the app.
Oh yeah I completely forgot about SmartTube. I left out ReVanced on purpose, because it still uses the proprietary YouTube app. But if you’re ok with this, there’s also uYouPlus for iOS.
Got 2 monitors. Sometimes I think I have another program focused, but turns out YouTube was focused. The other program also has 0-9 as keybinds (or just writing a number). Now the video jumped to a random timestamp.
You can’t just say that and not give a link! I use quite a few of the hotkeys, but those ones in particular cause me grief. If you have an extension that lets you pick and chose, I beg you to save us from that pain.
When Christian Selig announced his independent Apple Vision YouTube App, I thought twice about actually getting one, just so I would’t have to use YouTubes ridiculous Application and Web UIs.
I don’t care about video comments anymore; in my experience it was filled with attention-seeking content and incels trying to look cool. It’s also full of bots in the reply sections.
Instead, I use mpv media player to watch YouTube. I pick a video off my recommendations or the subscription page then I copy the video link and then I just have to do mpv <video link> in my terminal. It’s also much faster on my low-end PC.
It doesn’t have sponser-block support, but it does have ad-blocker. I haven’t really checked sponser-block support yet either.
HOWEVER, there’s cases where you do want to be able to like and comment: My main use case for Youtube these days is following crafters, people who make awesome stuff. And i do want to like and comment on those videos, not just for the obvious feedback to them but also to give them a hand in spreading the word of their stuff.
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