I've said it before, and I'll say it again: There's a lot to optimize in YouTube. The service would be more interesting if Google let us tweak a few details, but we all know that nothing is going to change on the official front. Our best alternative is to use extensions that help us modify the appearance and behavior of YouTube. That brings us to ImprovedTube, which includes dozens of parameters to install themes, hide sections, enable secondary codecs, block channels, force quality values, and more.
Instead of offering more flexible and advanced options, Google continues to bet on a 'canned' vision for YouTube. Not to go too far, how many times have we disabled autoplay, only to find that it was re-enabled in the next session? While I understand that the idea is to convince the user to spend extra time on the platform watching videos, I think that strategy would be more effective if the user could customize YouTube and prioritize their needs.
The good news is that there are several extensions that allow us to modify YouTube to our liking. In recent months we've talked about Enhancer for YouTube and Unhook, a particularly powerful combination, but if you're thinking of other alternatives, it's hard to go wrong with ImprovedTube.
How to customize YouTube with the ImprovedTube extension
ImprovedTube divides all its functions into a total of nine categories. In General, we can choose the default country for the home screen, choose the starting point (for example, jump straight to Trending or Subscriptions), hide animated thumbnails, or set its quality. Appearance is one of the most important sections, since it allows us to modify the header, the player, the details of each video, the comments section, the footer, and the sidebar. I definitely recommend spending a little time here and experimenting with all its options.
The Themes section speaks for itself, with a maximum of nine designs (including Custom and Default). Using themes also affects the ImprovedTube interface, but the important thing is to be able to inject a little color into YouTube. On the other hand, the Player section includes controls to disable autoplay, force levels of quality and volume, change playback speed, replace the VP9 codec with H.264, block access to 60 FPS videos, and enable secondary buttons like loop or screenshot (I recommend sending to clipboard to avoid conflicts).
Playlists, channel control, keyboard shortcuts, blacklists, and the stats analyzer round out the categories of ImprovedTube. The extension requires a lot of trial and error, but personally, I love that it's that way. Traditional YouTube is a desert of advanced options, and ImprovedTube puts an end to that once and for all. Download a copy!.
ImprovedTube (Chrome): Click here
ImprovedTube (Firefox): Click here
