I discovered Enhancer for YouTube

[Terminal Velocity]

For a long time I was using the ''YouTube High Definition'' extension to set a permanent video quality for YouTube because I have limited data per month, but I never liked that it required ''Access your data for all websites'', it is recommended by Mozilla so I let it be.

However recently it stopped working properly, thankfully, and I started looking for something else to do the job, and yes, there is a new extension now ''Enhancer for YouTube'' that proudly states in their description that it doesn't collect user data. In the permissions panel they say that ''This add-on needs to: Access your data for www.youtube.com'' and that's all. Also recommended by Mozilla.

It has dozens of settings on top of what I need it for and everything works flawlessly so far, have a look:

Enhancer for YouTube⢠â Get this Extension for ð¦ Firefox (en-US)

Download Enhancer for YouTube™ for Firefox. Take control of YouTube and boost your user experience!

addons.mozilla.org

 

[KGIII]

Just an FYI: If you do the Invidious thing, you can set your bandwidth in the preferences. I keep mine set to 720p and hope for the best.

 

[Terminal Velocity]

The link I have posted no longer works. Hopefully it will be available again

''Due to the massive changes that the YouTube developers have made, Enhancer for YouTube™ is now completely broken for Firefox (partially works for Chromium based browsers). A huge amount of work is necessary to fix all the issues so I had to pause its distribution for Firefox.''

Enhancer for YouTube is gone

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/enhancer-for-youtube/ What is the reason this add-on was removed? It used to be spotlighted at https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/enhancer-for-youtube/

discourse.mozilla.org

 

[Diputs]

I would not login Youtube when using YT

Let them try to collect data on that

 

[bob466]

Mine is also set to 720p.

 

[KGIII]

Mine is also set to 720p.

Did you go the Invidious route? That's an acceptable solution.

You can export your settings from YouTube and that will include the channels you're subscribed to. Those can be imported in your favorite Invidious instance, in your preferences, so long as you're signed in. I do believe there's a hard limit of 150 channels that can be imported, but that might not be true for Invidious.

Again, you can just use uBlock Origin. It's a brilliant extension brought to you by Raymond Gorhill, something like that. He's the same person who had uMatrix, another brilliant extension that still works but is no longer supported nor is it updated.

With the uBlock Origin extension, you can block YouTube ads. YouTube keeps figuring out new ways to show the ads and they keep developing new rules for those changes. It's a cat-and-mouse game and uBlock Origin is winning. Whenever ads start showing again, just remove and refresh the rules. This has worked for the months we've now been facing this.

Google, that is YouTube, will continue to fight this. They will continue to change things to bypass the ad blocking software. It's what they've chosen to do and I see no reason for them to stop now.

So, for me at least, that means fighting the good fight with uBlock Origin. It's just a bit of a pain in the butt to do this.

 

[rado84]

The enhancer mentioned in the OP was abandoned in 2021 and is no longer available on "Firefox extensons". But I found an even better one where 99.9% of the stuff works just fine. The 0.01% I'm referring to is an extension function that is waiting for a permanent fix.
The github page for bug reporting is here: https://github.com/VampireChicken12/youtube-enhancer
And this is the official "Firefox extensions" page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-enhancer-vc/
It also has a discord server for direct contact with the developer who is very active in developing and improving the extension. But for the invitation link you're gonna have to ask VampireChicken bc discord doesn't let me copy the link.

 

[Terminal Velocity]

The enhancer mentioned in the OP was abandoned in 2021 and is no longer available on "Firefox extensons". But I found an even better one where 99.9% of the stuff works just fine. The 0.01% I'm referring to is an extension function that is waiting for a permanent fix.
The github page for bug reporting is here: https://github.com/VampireChicken12/youtube-enhancer
And this is the official "Firefox extensions" page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-enhancer-vc/
It also has a discord server for direct contact with the developer who is very active in developing and improving the extension. But for the invitation link you're gonna have to ask VampireChicken bc discord doesn't let me copy the link.

Dude, that add-on has 15 users in total, it is not recommended and monitored by Mozilla and the developer calls himself Vampire Chicken... I think that if you use this you push your luck too far

 

[rado84]

Dude, that add-on has 15 users in total, it is not recommended and monitored by Mozilla and the developer calls himself Vampire Chicken... I think that if you use this you push your luck too far

Phahahahahahaha, dude, go buy yourself glasses, pls! Almost 6000 users! Plus it's open source, so you can review the code yourself, if you have any doubts. And the "not monitored by Mozilla" means nothing, they have to review hundreds of thousand extensions with more and more constantly added and their team isn't big enough to review every single extension on time.
When I found the extension 2 weeks ago it had a little less than 2000 users, now it has almost 6000. You do the math if the number would grow so fast, if the extension were fake...

 

[Terminal Velocity]

Just kidding, I will consider this extension when I'll do a clean install again. If something go wrong with this installation I can't reinstall ''Enhancer for YouTube'' at this point

 

[rado84]

Just kidding, I will consider this extension when I'll do a clean install again. If something go wrong with this installation I can't reinstall ''Enhancer for YouTube'' at this point

Enhancer for YouTube is abandoned, as I already said. Before I uninstalled it, it had a note in the browser extension manager which read "time of last update: August 2021". Now it's 2024...
You don't have to uninstall the abandoned extension, simply disable it and install the new one. If you don't like it, you can easily switch back to the abandoned one.

Btw, IDK if you're aware of that, but technically ALL firefox extensions are open source and you can view their code yourself bc xpi is basically a ZIP file with default compression and with format renamed to xpi, instead of ZIP. And it's not that hard to locate every single extension in Firefox, if you know where to look for it and how.

 

[Terminal Velocity]

My installation of Enhancer for YouTube say ''Last Updated October 10, 2023''... soon it will be available again for FF

 

[MikeWalsh]

Me, I like FreeTube. Their development model makes use of the Invidious APIs. So far, it's rarely let me down.

Okay, the thing's Electron-based.....which of course, means it's built around a stripped-back Chromium browser. Since Chromium - and Google, owners of YT - are all in the same camp, it stands to reason they'll hold off on messing about with it, because it's making use of their software.....primarily, their browser. And of course Google want you to watch YT in their browser, to maximize the number of 'hits'.

(This has always been at the root of why Google alter the YT code so often. To them, Firefox is little more than an annoyance; hell, Google - at this point in time - all but have the browser market sewn-up.......more or less like M$ with Internet Exploder, 20 years ago. And every time you watch YT on the site, it's one more chance for Big Brother to target you with adverts. As things are ATM, unless you're prepared to dub up a few shekels a month to avoid them, you're getting a face-full of advertising every 10-15 minutes.......whether you like it or not. At least with FreeTube, I can watch things uninterrupted......for now.)

As for the open-source/monopoly arguments, I'd rather use Chrome and the 'clones' any day.......'cos they're dead reliable, and everything just "works". I've been with Chrome since day one, more than 16 years ago, through all the ups & downs.....and it's still a damn good browser. I admit, Google have this nasty habit of frequently dumping projects without much warning, but their infrastructure - and the way everything just works together, is second to none. They must have a dossier on me as thick as a small stack of Bibles by now.....and ya know what?

I really couldn't care less. So sue me.

(shrug....)


Mike.

 

[KGIII]

Me, I like FreeTube.

I'd have to break my channels down into lists of 150 channels long to use FreeTube effectively.

I hit the subscribe button way too often. I don't watch all that content, but it's nice to have a home page full of stuff that's actually going to interest me more often than not.

They must have a dossier on me as thick as a small stack of Bibles by now.....and ya know what?

I really couldn't care less. So sue me.

Yup. Google knows a whole lot about me. I even use their ad platform. They even know my routing number so that they can pay me. (They do not pay me very much. No, they do not.)

But, do you know who hasn't lost my data? Google. Google hasn't lost my data.

And no, they don't sell your data in the manner people think. They allow people to target you in aggregate, by demographics and interests. You can't just head on over to a secret Google page and buy KGIII's information.

 

[Terminal Velocity]

Yup. Google knows a whole lot about me. I even use their ad platform. They even know my routing number so that they can pay me. (They do not pay me very much. No, they do not.)

But, do you know who hasn't lost my data? Google. Google hasn't lost my data.

And no, they don't sell your data in the manner people think. They allow people to target you in aggregate, by demographics and interests. You can't just head on over to a secret Google page and buy KGIII's information.

They have made agreements with all the countries in the world to provide access to all the user profiles they have made, for free, in exchange for favorable laws and any services that need, they call it lobbying. Google is evil, the biggest evil of the 21th century and probably the world ever seen. You exchange your privacy for very little my friend. Not that we who ''resist'' we do any better but it's a matter of principle to at least be aware of what is going on

You don't just head over to a secret Google page and buy KGIII's information... it is actually free of charge

 

[KGIII]

They have made agreements with all the countries in the world to provide access to all the user profiles they have made, for free, in exchange for favorable laws and any services that need, they call it lobbying.

Yeah, they comply with lawful subpoenas. I would too. It's not an agreement, it's the law.

I will decidedly not fight that in court on your behalf. In fact, I'd expect pretty much every company to comply.

 

[Terminal Velocity]

Yeah, they comply with lawful subpoenas. I would too. It's not an agreement, it's the law.

I will decidedly not fight that in court on your behalf. In fact, I'd expect pretty much every company to comply.

There is no right to be found but I never agreed to be monitored for anyone's behalf, this is all against my will, and the only thing we can do is to be aware at this point. This can't be the right thing

 

[KGIII]

I never agreed to be monitored for anyone's behalf, this is all against my will, and the only thing we can do is to be aware at this point.

I'd say you kinda agreed when you visited the site(s). Google loads a cookie that you can easily block. You could also avoid visiting sites that use Google's analytics. It'd mean a more limited internet, I suppose.

I think of it like this:

If I go into a store, library, or any public space, (and similar), I agree to be seen in those spaces.

I can't go into a store and declare that I don't agree to be recorded by their security cameras. Well, I could, but that'd be futile and a waste of my energy. When you accept their cookie, you agree to be tracked and recorded.

You'll have a much more limited experience and there's a lot you won't get to do because of things like their CAPTCHA being everywhere. Hmm... You'd be unable to use this site.

<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-3314314-270"></script>

(And Google ads and probably analytics. I didn't dig deeper into the page's source.)

My Solution:

Anything I truly want to be private is kept offline. I don't even do any banking online (other than PayPal). I use a temporary debit card, the credit union lets me create them, for most purchases online.

When I retired, my company was sold to a public company and it made the news. It was listed in a number of things like tech publications. I'd been a bit loose with my PII which led to people crawling out of the woodwork to contact me. I ended up paying a company (it took about 18 months) to get my information removed and manipulated. The latter is done with SEO trickery. Rather than try to remove information, you make other things show up in the search engines instead.

I do value my privacy - more than you're probably thinking.

I just keep the important private data offline entirely. I do not use GMail for anything important/private, for example.

If anything, I respect your privacy more than my own. My site has a published privacy policy and I go to great lengths to keep your information secure. I would obey any lawful request for information but I'd likely run it by my lawyer first just to ensure it's a lawful request.

 

[Terminal Velocity]

@rado84 as I was telling you Enhancer for YouTube is up and running again for FF (check the link in the first post) As you can see it is not abandoned. That's bad news for Vampire Chicken, the boss is back

 

[rado84]

@rado84 as I was telling you Enhancer for YouTube is up and running again for FF (check the link in the first post) As you can see it is not abandoned. That's bad news for Vampire Chicken, the boss is back

The bad news is not for bloodsucking chicken, it's for the developer of EnhForYouTube. Bc thanks to me and a few other users, the new extension will have features that the EFY won't have any time soon.
But I did download MRFDEV's extension, disabled everything I don't need, except for one thing and left the second enhancer work same as usual. Both extensions seem to be working just fine together.