As seen, thanks to the extensions for Chrome and Firefox you can improve the usability of your favorite websites, even some of the most popular sites like Facebook or Youtube. Those who often see videos on Youtube can add really interesting options to the player, in order to obtain additional buttons and functions, or to make the playback controls, volume controls or to select the image quality more immediate.
The following are extensions to enhance or customize Youtube on Chrome (some of them are also available for Firefox) approved by Google and therefore regular, without security risks.
1) Magic Actions is perhaps the best extension of this series, because it adds useful functions without changing the interface of the youtube site too much, with a set of new buttons that appear below the player.
Among the options you can activate the cinema mode, raise and lower the volume with the mouse wheel, view the videos immediately large, save frames, see the preview of the videos and an indication of the ratings, activate the night or day view, eliminate country restrictions and many other things.
To configure all the functions, press the options button on the toolbar added by Magic Actions.
2) Turn off the light is a simpler and very popular extension that only adds one of the options offered by Magic Actions, i.e. the cinema mode. Basically, it allows you to watch videos with a black background, so as to hide everything else and make it look like it was opened by a PC program, without having to put it on the full screen. The nice thing is that this extension works with all streaming video sites. With this extension you also get an unexpected set of options such as those for night mode for Youtube, password protection, voice commands and many other things.
3) SmartVideo is the extension to use in case you have a slow internet connection.
As already explained in another article, with Smartvideo it is possible to watch Youtube videos without interruption by accelerating buffering, that is, loading. If every time you open a video it freezes continuously, you should try this extension which also allows you to set the quality of the movies.
Similar to SmartVideo, also try h264fy to optimize Youtube videos in HD on Chrome and Firefox
4) MakeGif is used to extract a part of video and transform it into an animated GIF image. The extension activates a button directly on the YouTube video player in the bottom bar to get started. You can then set the start and end time of the GIF and also adjust the height, width, frame rate and quality.
5) Video Blocker is the extension for those who no longer want to watch videos from a certain channel.
Instead of insulting the video maker or youtuber that we hate, better ignore it and block all of its videos so that they no longer appear in the searches and in the list of recommended or related videos. To block a video channel, right click on any video and select the blocker option.
6) Video Preview allows you to see animated previews instead of video thumbnails, so you can immediately understand what it is before clicking it. In addition to an animated preview, by placing the mouse over the video thumbnail you will also see the rating bar, to see it is liked by most people.
7) YouTube Enhancer is another Chrome extension similar to Magic Actions, with many additional options for YouTube, including the choice between different layouts for the video player, the ability to select the quality, to change the volume with the mouse wheel, to open a video and search for others by leaving it playing in a corner, to block videos from a certain channel and much more.
8) Smart Pause is used to stop the video you are watching on Youtube when you open or select another tab. YouTube Smart Pause blocks the video from playing even if the card becomes inactive. In the preferences menu you can choose the focus mode instead of that of the active tab, so that the video pauses if you open any window on your computer (and not only if you switch to another browser tab). It is also possible to set a delay time after which the video stops, perhaps after a certain number of seconds that you change the tab.
9) MusixMatch and extensions to see the lyrics of the songs on Youtube, perfect for singing or just to follow the words of your favorite songs.
10) Search inside Youtube videos and extract subtitles
