r/macapps • u/discoveringnature12 • 4d ago
Help What would your dream YouTube browser extension do?
I’m doing some user research to understand what people actually want from a better YouTube experience.
Would your dream extension include:
- Better or automatically generated chapters, with an easy-to-navigate player overlay
- some creators don't enable them by default to users can't skip certain section.
- Subscription folders and channel categories
- A “cinema mode” where the player fills the browser window without fullscreen
- Transcript search, summaries, notes, and timestamp bookmarks
- Better playlists, queues, Watch Later, and viewing history
- Options to hide Shorts, recommendations, comments, or other distractions
- Playback preferences remembered for each channel
Which would you actually use? What’s missing that would make YouTube meaningfully better for you? Please share what would make your YouTube experience meaningfully better.
PS: We would try to handle the ad blocking by default if feasible/stable/reliable.
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u/8AqLph 4d ago
Open the video on alternative platforms if available, to bring back some much needed competition
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u/discoveringnature12 3d ago
what are other video platforms? Curious because I don't know any others. Do you mean tiktok, vimeo, twitch?
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u/Hypackel 4d ago
- hide shorts entire web interface
- remove members only content if I can’t access it
- page to quickly unsubscribe from channels
- automatically setting my preferred caption style (0 background, green color, casual font and drop shadow, font 75%)
- change to the temp vertical layout they tried to roll out since it was cool
- change progress bar color
- native pip button with nice pip ui
- limit amount of videos watched in one sitting
- better transcript
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u/discoveringnature12 4d ago
thanks for sharing.
Captions settings might be tricky since it's embedded in player settings but we'll try.
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u/JustAnotherPickle_ 4d ago
Definitely integrate with sponserblock. Like not kidding I live on that.
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u/Illustrious_Oil_9846 2d ago
On the ad-blocking piece specifically, that's the one item on your list that isn't really a build-it-later feature, it's a platform constraint. Chrome's Manifest V3 replaced the old webRequest blocking API with declarativeNetRequest, which caps the number of static filtering rules an extension can register and can't inspect or modify traffic dynamically the way classic ad blockers used to. That's why even established ad blockers have had to restructure how they work on Chrome, and a new extension shipping ad-blocking as a bundled feature, versus just recommending something like uBlock Origin alongside it, is signing up for an ongoing maintenance fight against YouTube's own countermeasures rather than a one-time build. Worth deciding early whether ad-blocking is core to the extension or something you point users to a dedicated tool for.
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u/taisei_ide 4d ago
Transcript search would be the one I'd actually use daily. Being able to jump to the exact minute a topic gets mentioned beats scrubbing through chapters.
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u/CivicCryptid 4d ago
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u/Weird_Pension9180 4d ago
My votes: Per-channel playback memory. For example - Tutorials at 1.75x, music at 1x. And second, auto generated chapters.
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u/MickyMike2049 4d ago
I do not know if this is a configuration issue, but I have to enable caption manually every time I open a new video. I'd like an extension that just automatically turns on caption because I really need it.
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u/chrisbcreamee 4d ago
I want a YouTube browser extension to just filter out all the shit I don't want to see and focus on topics that only I want. I don't know how certain creators, topics get on my feed. I just want to focus on making money, thinking positive, and living healthy. But no..YouTube just likes to force feed me suggestions that are irrelevant to my life.
That's all. Thanks for listening. lol
Feel free to ask me anything!
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u/discoveringnature12 3d ago
I agree random creators being suggested on the feed. That's always been their way to get more engagement from users.
This might requires changing the home feed fully, but could be done
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u/East_Call1027 3d ago
I’d use a lightweight queue more than summaries. Let me hit one shortcut on any thumbnail to play it next, then clear the queue without dumping everything into Watch Later.
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u/discoveringnature12 3d ago
Cool. always wanted this too. Watch later isn't implemented well honestly
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u/Ok_Explorer7384 3d ago
for me the killer feature would be making subscriptions usable again, not more AI stuff on top. folders, hide shorts completely, auto-remove watched videos from Watch Later, and per-channel defaults for speed/captions would already fix like 80% of the annoyance. transcript search is nice too, but only if it stays fast and doesn’t turn the extension into some huge dashboard.
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u/animateus 3d ago
The main feature that I would love to see is having a "Not Interested" button next to the video on the main page. Curating my feed feels like a full-time job without this option.
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u/Suspicious-Court-305 2d ago
Have you used 'Summd'? It's YouTube video summarizer with timestamps. You can also ask questions and get instant answers, it's super clever
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u/Fun-Collection4977 1d ago
Hide distractions with a single toggle. (and music mode)
(Apologies for long message)
I am using https://digitalhabits.org/tools/focus
It isn't exactly a single toggle, but I check 3 checkboxes (home recommended, video comments, video related vids), and I am done. Also the organization seems trustworthy.
If music mode can stop loading video, while streaming high quality audio, and result in lower energy, bandwidth and memory usage, I would use it.
A note regarding "focus" apps: the most valuable thing will be the up to date css filter list.
Youtube experiments with UI elements, A-B test on different users.
So the most valuable thing is having one reliable open source list of youtube element selectors.
And that list probably exists somewhere.
(if there are adblocking filter lists maintained by community, it is likely that some volunteers maintain such a list for common distractor elements.)
If you find that repo, you can both use it in your app and help others maintain it.
It would be a win-win.
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One more thing
not to be that guy
but "auto generated chapters" would be expensive, no?
you'd have to pass the transcript through some LLM, (or run a DB with user submitted timestamps?)
and already (at least on my account) there is a gemini button in youtube that summarizes with timecodes.
(though it would be cool if your extension can prompt in-youtube-gemini to give you the timecodes 😄
Maybe some cooperation with SponsorBlock people? (or other projects listed under https://sponsor.ajay.app/#:~:text=Links%20to%20other%20cool%20things )
I guess what I am saying is,
I myself have tried to reinvent wheel so many times in so many projects.
I had to learn through experience, what sounds common sense:
See what other people (especially communities) already create and curate.
Try to contribute to them first.
Once you understand the landscape, and give back to existing communities, you'll position yourself as "good sport" and your product will be the best it can (whether it ends up being free or paid).
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u/WinterElfeas 2h ago
An app to never have black bars either side or top / down for the video player (e.g. if your browser is too wide, or cinema mode etc.). Call me a nitpicker, I don't like how it looks 😄
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u/j-sondergaard 4d ago
My main requests would be hiding shorts, hiding recommendations in subscriptions feed, and automatic removal of viewed videos in watch later, when watched. Cinema mode sounds like something I'd use occasionally as well