Better Youtube experience?

D

DellAxim

Gawd
Joined
Feb 14, 2003
Messages
999
Youtube has become my main source of "TV" these days. I like it better than cable but it seems like they still try their hardest to drive me insane. I pay for youtube premium and generally use it from a Chrome browser in Windows.

Two major things driving me insane:
1. Can I force the quality to minimum 1080p no matter what the connection speed? I have cellular internet, which bumps up and down in speed very frequently. Watching 1080p is fine, but sometimes I may have to wait a few seconds to buffer. I do not want youtube to automatically switch to a lower resolution. Is there some setting for this anywhere? For now I have to manually choose this on each video.

2. Can I tell them to stop recommending things I have already watched? I really don't understand this, at least half of the suggestions on my homepage I have already watched in full and youtube knows this. Why do they think I want to see it again?! Any way to turn off "repeats"? I've tried hitting the "not interested" button many times on these, but youtube is definitely not getting the hint.

I've tried googling these things but I get instructions for things that don't exist, contradictory answers, or no answer at all. It seems like youtube is intentionally trying to confuse everybody!
 
There's a few add-ons that force the highest resolution possible such as "Enhancer for Youtube", have it set to always play in 8k and it will always choose the highest possible framerate.

As for the recommendations of stuff you've already watched - fuck if I know, i keep telling them to stop showing these and say "already watched" and its helped a tiny bit, but not nearly enough.

I've found that the youtube app on android (including android TV) tends to work a hell of a lot better than chrome for whatever reason. Especially with HDR content.
 
DellAxim said:
Youtube has become my main source of "TV" these days. I like it better than cable but it seems like they still try their hardest to drive me insane. I pay for youtube premium and generally use it from a Chrome browser in Windows.

Two major things driving me insane:
1. Can I force the quality to minimum 1080p no matter what the connection speed? I have cellular internet, which bumps up and down in speed very frequently. Watching 1080p is fine, but sometimes I may have to wait a few seconds to buffer. I do not want youtube to automatically switch to a lower resolution. Is there some setting for this anywhere? For now I have to manually choose this on each video.

2. Can I tell them to stop recommending things I have already watched? I really don't understand this, at least half of the suggestions on my homepage I have already watched in full and youtube knows this. Why do they think I want to see it again?! Any way to turn off "repeats"? I've tried hitting the "not interested" button many times on these, but youtube is definitely not getting the hint.

I've tried googling these things but I get instructions for things that don't exist, contradictory answers, or no answer at all. It seems like youtube is intentionally trying to confuse everybody!
Click to expand...

I hate YouTube's website and apps with a passion.

I customize the site on my computer to my liking.


Will never use the apps.

Do not want YouTube premium either sense you have to have an account. I don't want one. Just saying.


To bad you can't customize youtube on the mobile phone :(


There is also some programs on the pc that makes YouTube nicer like FreeTube I think. I forgot which others. The problem is they don't support highest quality for all videos.
 
ng4ever said:
I hate YouTube's website and apps with a passion.

I customize the site on my computer to my liking.
Click to expand...
And what is it you are doing to "customize to your liking"? If I didn't have an account then every single possible recommendation would be random, and most likely something I do not want to see. (The "popular" trending BS is absolute trash) Even though their current system has serious flaws, about 20% are recommendations I do actually want to watch. I DO want youtube tracking what I watch so I don't have to sort through 500 billion videos to find topics I like. Premium also comes with unlimited music and it only cost me $7.99 since I signed up like 7 years ago...

I just can't comprehend why they think I would want to watch something over and over. I have no idea why but I think they make it obnoxious and confusing for everybody on purpose. I like the fact that they mark already watched videos with the red bar at the bottom, I just don't understand why they won't use that data for better recommendations...
 
DellAxim said:
And what is it you are doing to "customize to your liking"? If I didn't have an account then every single possible recommendation would be random, and most likely something I do not want to see. (The "popular" trending BS is absolute trash) Even though their current system has serious flaws, about 20% are recommendations I do actually want to watch. I DO want youtube tracking what I watch so I don't have to sort through 500 billion videos to find topics I like. Premium also comes with unlimited music and it only cost me $7.99 since I signed up like 7 years ago...

I just can't comprehend why they think I would want to watch something over and over. I have no idea why but I think they make it obnoxious and confusing for everybody on purpose. I like the fact that they mark already watched videos with the red bar at the bottom, I just don't understand why they won't use that data for better recommendations...
Click to expand...

I have a customization that hides already watched videos.
 
I have Auto highest quality always, Rating viewable before clicking a youtube video, Age restriction bypass (so I don't have to have an account of course), click to play.
 
I don't see how premium is worth it.

Unless maybe you use it on a mobile phone or tablet a lot, YouTube.

Still the new quality picker on mobile apps is horrible.
 
I subscribe to all my favorite YouTube channels without an account with RSS feeds. Know it may not be around forever but still better than using the mobile app.
 
Oh for christ sake! HOW are you doing that? If you just came here to brag about it nobody cares. And I'm not here to justify my subscriptions to you.
 
DellAxim said:
Oh for christ sake! HOW are you doing that? If you just came here to brag about it nobody cares. And I'm not here to justify my subscriptions to you.
Click to expand...

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/423851-simple-youtube-age-restriction-bypass

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/406420-youtube-click-to-play

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/23661-youtube-hd

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/397094-youtube-video-preview-and-ratings-keyless


I know it could be a little risky but you can view the code if you want before hand just saying. P.S. Anyway I expect these Tampermonkey or Greasemonkey scripts to disappear soon now :( Always seems to happen to me. Maybe I am wrong lol.
 
Subscribing to YouTubers without an account is pretty easy I just use the channel RSS feed page!
 
Wow. You are a special kind of weirdo. You clearly have not understood the question, please stop posting here. You are not helping. You don't need to make 40 posts in a row. I am not concerned about being tracked, as I explained I PREFER that, this has nothing to do with the question I asked - you are literally suggesting the opposite.
 
To be fair, he did mention some scripts you can try, even if it took quite a few posts to get there, lol. Maybe the "YouTube HD" one linked would work to set a minimum quality?

You may want to check for browser extensions that help clean up or enhance Youtube and see if one of those has a "minimum quality" setting. I've seen a number of "Youtube Enhancer" extensions before, but your mileage may vary. The issues you're encountering I don't believe are solvable using YouTube's own settings- yeah even if you dismiss recommendations, they come back, as well as repeats and so forth. YT is just broken in that way, and they don't have the best options for choosing quality either.

Extensions/scripts can potentially help solve these- but often these eventually stop working over time because Google/YT changes their API or has extensions taken down- might have better luck with stuff outside of Chrome- since Google controls that too- but I don't know how restrictive they are on YT extensions at the moment- or maybe you can sideload them.

In other words, there is no surefire way to address your problems, but with a bit of research of extensions, scripts, etc you may find something that at least works temporarily, if not for a while.
 
On a related note, why the hell does Amazon send me emails wanting me to buy shit I've already bought? :wtf:
 
Deadjasper said:
On a related note, why the hell does Amazon send me emails wanting me to buy shit I've already bought? :wtf:
Click to expand...

Because lots of people buy things repeatedly, but don't want to 'subscribe' and get something automatically delivered every week / month. I buy parrot treats or toys three or four times a year. They remind me every friggin' week. Easier to just delete the emails and ignore the suggestions, than pull my hair out worrying about them.
 
I bought a hot air rework station, not exactly something people would subscribe to and I've been getting emails ever since advertising hot air rework stations.
 
I also use Enhancer for Youtube but it sounds like you have Youtube TV and I'm not sure if that still works. It really is perplexing how Youtube always seemed to have a clunky interface since the beginning. I know this isn't very helpful, but at the end of the day if you can't find a simple solution you can look to other subscription services. I don't think Youtube TV is necessarily the best value depending on what you watch
 
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