There’s no denying that YouTube is the world’s most popular video streaming service, but what if you could get even more from it? If you’re anything like me, you’ll be accessing YouTube almost exclusively through your web browser. It’s a given that if you’re using Chrome, you’re familiar with all of the available extensions. Chrome add-ons can make Gmail more useful, personalise tabs, and do other things. There are a number of Chrome extensions available that might enhance your YouTube experience. We’ve rounded together 10 of the greatest Chrome extensions for watching YouTube videos right now.
1. Magic Actions
Magic Actions is an all in one Chrome extension that adds dozens of handy features in YouTube. Some of its main features include the ability to control volume with mouse wheel or right-click, take video screenshots, preview video & its ratings, day/night mode, cinema mode with multiple themes, control buffer, circumvent country limitations and much more.
When you use Magic Actions, a button appears in the address bar only when you are viewing YouTube in the browser. By selecting the button and then ‘Options,’ you will be able to customise every aspect of the programme. With so many features to choose from, personalising your experience is a breeze.
2. Turn Off the Lights
Cinema mode in Magic Actions allows you to decrease the background while still keeping the video in focus, although it’s a very limited feature set. The Turn Off the Lights add-on provides the theatre mode with a slew of customization choices. Full control over the faded background’s opacity and automation are also available. You can also alter the fade colour to any other colour you choose, so you’re no longer restricted to using the Black fade colour.
In addition, it has a night mode to make browsing in the dark easier, as well as screensaver and password security features. Additionally, these capabilities are available across the web, not just on YouTube.
3. SmartVideo
If you have a slower internet connection, which results in videos on YouTube being eternally stuck in buffering, you should give SmartVideo a try. It’s a buffer control addon that allows you full control over how the buffering of a video works. You can customise the extensions to make sure YouTube videos start buffering as soon as the page loads, instead of waiting for the video to start. It can also immediately play the video when buffering is complete, or play it when it knows that the video will play smoothly afterwards (depending on your internet speed) (based on your internet speed).
In addition to buffer control, it includes many more capabilities like looping all played videos, hiding annotations, configuring video quality, and hiding player settings. SmartVideo also works with YouTube videos as well as those that have been put on other websites.
4. GIFit!
Have a thing for animated GIFs? YouTube videos may be turned into animated GIFs that you can send to friends and colleagues. Although you can make GIFs from YouTube videos natively, the process is cumbersome and lacks customizability possibilities. If you’re serious about making GIFs from YouTube videos, give GIFit! a shot. You may get started by clicking on the “GIFit” button in the YouTube video player’s bottom-right corner. Using GIFit!, you can control the length of a GIF, its width and height as well as its frame rate and quality. To create and download a GIF, click the red GIFit! button.
5. Video Blocker
If you are tired of viewing videos from a channel you really despise or find improper, you should use the Video Blocker plugin. It lets you block all the videos from a specified channel, and the videos will never be shown to you again. It will delete the videos from your search, recommendations and any other area of YouTube and make it as if they were never even there.
Right-click on a video from the channel you wish to restrict and choose “Block videos from this channel” to do so. You can also use keywords, wildcards, and channel names to restrict access to specific channels or categories of videos.
6. Video Preview
YouTube videos normally have a single display picture to inform you what it’s about, but it can be a little hard to estimate the content it offers. Video Preview addon allows you to see three preview photos taken from a video to give you an impression of the content it offers.
On top of that, it also shows you a bar on the bottom of the featured image suggesting the likes and dislikes of the video. Overall, the Video Preview extension can save you a lot of time that would have been otherwise spent when you click on a video only to realise that it’s not worth watching.
7. BriefTube
Like Video Preview, the BriefTube Chrome extension makes sure you don’t spend your time on videos that simply appear good on the outside. BriefTube generates a summary of what a video gives and lets you simply skip to the video segment that is relevant to you. The summary produces an overview of the themes in the video along with the timestamps, so that you may click on the topics to quickly jump to them in the movie.
Unfortunately, BriefTube only works with videos that have English subtitles, are HTML5-compliant, and last for more than five minutes. To summarise, the addon is ideal for instructive films with chapters because it makes it simple to navigate between them.
8. YouTube Plus
YouTube Plus is another excellent Chrome extension for YouTube that has many of the same capabilities as Magic Actions as well as some new ones. It has features like limitless scrolling in feeds, numerous video layouts, static audio volume, video quality selection, volume changing with the mouse wheel, and more.
YouTube Plus also allows you to automatically generate a playlist of the top 20 videos from your subscriptions list. Additionally, a built-in block button allows you to restrict access to content from particular channels.
9. Ratings Preview
Ratings Preview, as the name implies, displays a bar with the number of “likes” and “dislikes” each YouTube video has under its thumbnail. This can be achieved using the Video Preview extension, but with greater customization choices and additional features, Ratings Preview comes out on top every time. The thickness, colour, and opacity of the bar are all customizable. It also contains a built-in RP score system, which employs a variety of algorithms to gauge the quality of a video before assigning a 0-10 rating.
Additionally, the Ratings Preview feature displays the films with the highest ratings on a page so you can rapidly scan the list and select the finest ones.
10. Smart Pause
YouTube’s Smart Pause Chrome extension has a lot of useful features. When you close a tab, it automatically pauses a YouTube video and resumes it when you return to the tab later. Using Smart Pause will ensure that you never miss a video again while still continuing to work on other things as you open a new tab. Smart Pause did an excellent job of pausing the video and promptly resuming it in my experience.
Try these cool Chrome Extensions for YouTube
These YouTube Chrome addons are sure to improve your overall YouTube experience. Using a YouTube extension can make your viewing experience better and help you be more productive at the same time. Consequently, we encourage you to give them a shot and provide feedback. Let us know if you know of a YouTube Chrome addon that should have been included. Thank you so much for taking the time to contact us!
