Everyone knows that YouTube has a wide margin for improvement, but Google does not enable any official mechanism to optimize our experience. This “single vision” of the service is very poor, and if we want to make changes, we have no option but to resort to extensions. One of them is Unhook, which helps us eliminate distractions, comments, suggestions, and entire sections of the interface such as Shorts and End Cards.
Many of the decisions Google has made regarding YouTube arose in response to a shock. One of the most striking examples is that of Shorts, which seek to fight TikTok. That service is going through a not entirely favorable moment due to the current geopolitical situation, and thus an excellent opportunity presents itself for Mountain View to advance its strategy.
However, this does not make YouTube “better”. In fact, many users want nothing to do with Shorts on the platform, and we can also include the erratic recommendations of the algorithm, offers, tickets, marketing, and the darn End Cards that block videos. Sadly, YouTube does not allow us to disable any of that, and keeps adding things in response to other shocks. What can we do? Customize YouTube on our own with an extension like Unhook.
Unhook: The closest thing to the “YouTube Lite” users want
This extension compatible with Chrome, Firefox, and other flavors of Chromium places an icon in the browser that gives us access to a long list of options to disable, but the initial step is to activate Unhook. The first switch hides the entire Home feed, and includes an additional parameter to open the Subscriptions section instead.
Afterwards we can hide the video sidebar, recommended videos, live chats, playlists, transcripts, chapters, and everything related to fundraising. Two very valuable parameters in Unhook allow us to block the feed on the final screen and the End Cards, which are especially annoying in some videos.
After these come comments, mixes, marketing/tickets/offers from channels, video information, notifications, “Explore” and “Trending”, “More from YouTube”, annotations, autoplay, and all the Shorts sections. Now, it is important to note that shorts do not disappear completely: if channels in your subscriptions publish them or they match a specific search, they will appear among the results.
In short, Unhook is an excellent extension for anyone who wants to modify the YouTube interface and adapt it to their tastes. At the same time, we have noticed that it does not conflict with YouTube Enhancer, so we have even more possibilities to optimize the service.
Official site: Click here
