YouTube has grown into a truly humongous platform over time, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t without its flaws. Perhaps you’re sick of having to constantly fiddle with various settings that seem to constantly reset each time you close your browser, or perhaps you’re sick and tired of seeing ads and sponsorships.
Regardless of your reasons, there’s plenty to want to improve on YouTube, and extensions allow you to do just that. Here are six of the best free Firefox add-ons which will help improve your YouTube viewing experience.
First on this list comes YouTube High Definition, a Firefox add-on which changes the way that you view videos on YouTube.
YouTube High Definition, as the name more than implies, is an extension which allows you to make sure that YouTube will always play your videos at the highest-resolution possible.
If you’re looking for a specific resolution, say capped to your monitor’s resolution or lower if your internet struggles, YouTube High Definition allows you to select a preferred resolution as well.
YouTube High Definition hosts many other features as well. This extension allows you to set a video player size that you prefer, such as the miniplayer or theater mode, and also allows you to adjust auto-muting of volume and stopping of video play automatically.
This add-on even supports YouTube videos that external sites embed in their webpages, such as Facebook or Twitter. Anywhere you might find a YouTube video, the extension works. With this extension, you’ll have a seamless viewing experience, regardless of where you are online.
If you’re sick and tired of seeing sponsors, subscription reminders, and more in your YouTube videos, then SponsorBlock is a free Firefox extension which can help to alleviate this issue.
SponsorBlock is an entirely crowdsourced extension which relies on input from its users to identify and subsequently skip all manner of annoyances that you might find in YouTube videos.
Sponsorships, intros, outros, subscription reminders, and even non-music segments in music videos can all be skipped automatically, so you no longer have to experience them if you don’t want to.
SponsorBlock automatically highlights segments of the video bar ahead of time, so you know when an upcoming sponsorship is coming. This way, you can elect not to skip certain portions of the video, and can report any misleading or incorrectly identified sponsorships.
Next on this list comes Video Download Helper, a Firefox add-on which allows you to download all manner of videos and images from websites.
Technically, you don’t have to use this extension exclusively for YouTube, but that doesn’t mean that it does nothing for your viewing experience. Video Download Helper will activate automatically whenever it finds an embedded video anywhere.
For example, if you go to watch a video on YouTube, the extension will activate. From there, downloading the video directly to your computer is as easy as clicking on Video Download Helper’s button.
You can use this extension to do more than simply download any videos from YouTube, however. Video Download Helper can also make file conversions, such as converting between WEBM and MP4 formats, for example.
Video Download Helper can also perform aggregation tasks. Which is to say that if you’ve ever wanted to combine a series of separate videos or audio files, then this extension will be able to do that for you.
If you’re looking for several tools that all serve to enhance your YouTube viewing experience, then Enhancer for YouTube is an excellent free add-on which should hopefully do so.
Enhancer for YouTube is an extension which does multiple different things all at once, making it the ultimate enhancer suite for YouTube. One of the biggest draws for Enhancer for YouTube are the mouse and keyboard shortcuts which it adds.
The extension allows you to set up different shortcuts to control YouTube however you wish, and adds mouse functionality that doesn’t exist by default.
Enhancer for YouTube also allows you to automate repetitive tasks on YouTube, such as selecting the proper playback quality so that you no longer have to repeat the same inputs again and again.
The extension also supports dark themes for YouTube, as well as support for a popout player for YouTube videos which will stay on top of your window regardless of what you’re doing. This way, you can more effectively multitask than ever before.
Next, we have YouTube Downloader WebX. YouTube Downloader WebX is a YouTube video and audio downloader which is lightweight and easy to use.
All you need to do to make the most of YouTube Downloader WebX is to install the extension and begin browsing. Once it detects a YouTube video embedded in a page, the extension will let you download it easily and painlessly.
YouTube Downloader WebX is also capable of converting videos to various formats as well when you download, if you so wish.
Finally, we have Adblocker for YouTube. If you’ve spent any time on YouTube, then no doubt you’ve been frustrated by just how many ads you experience when you’re trying to watch your videos.
Adblocker for YouTube provides a solution to this by removing video and display ads from YouTube. The benefits here are two-fold.
You no longer have to wait to keep watching the content you want to watch, and you’ll also notice faster video and website loading as you browse due to the reduced ad load.
This extension is great if you want to avoid installing an ad-blocker for all of your browsing, or if you find that your current ad-blocker sometimes misses YouTube ads when you’re watching.
There’s So Much More Than Just Watching to Be Done
Hopefully, this list has helped you find a brand-new way to watch YouTube. Whether or not that’s the case, however, you can always find more different and better ways to experience everything that YouTube has to offer.
Consider viewing it differently than you ever have. There’s always more out there to explore, especially with a platform this large. All you have to do is look.
