How to Deshittify YouTube

Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

It's practically a modern antivirus, regardless of which site you use and what OS or device you need it for. It provides protection, and beyond that it makes your internet experience much better. It's the single most important extension; anything else is just extra nicety compared to it.

Install uBlock Origin and enable the extra filter lists (Annoyances, uBO filters – Quick fixes, AdGuard annoyances).

Are you tired of hearing about NordVPN, Honey, BetterHelp, or whatever other sponsor? SponsorBlock has a community‑sourced database of sponsored segments, intros, outros, and much more. Practically every video from any decently sized channel will have timestamps for all this stuff within an hour or two, and SponsorBlock will automatically skip them for you without you having to do anything.

You can customize what gets skipped. Want to keep creator shout-outs but skip paid sponsor segments? Toggle just the 'sponsor' category.

Made by the same developer as SponsorBlock, this time for thumbnails. Some channels have really good videos but have to play "the game" and use really annoying thumbnails with dark patterns just so they don't get buried by the algorithm. DeArrow replaces them with frames from the video. It also gives you better titles. If you hate the current thumbnails and titles, this is a must‑have.

You can choose whether to replace titles, thumbnails, or both, and still peek at the original if you need to.

Every company is obsessed with AI, and Google—the company that owns YouTube—is no exception. It's gotten worse. Before, it was just titles being auto‑translated by YouTube's AI; now even audio is auto‑translated, which is unacceptable because the audio is just an awful AI voice.

ReVanced is a must‑have on Android. It makes the official YouTube app so much better. Besides not having any ads, you can actually properly customize practically every feature (or remove features like Shorts).

It comes with SponsorBlock built‑in, and adds features like background playback, better picture‑in‑picture, and a bunch of UI improvements. Once you patch it, the stock app feels so inferior by comparison.

Apple makes everything harder, but not impossible. YTLitePlus is the ReVanced of iOS. It includes ad blocking, background playback, SponsorBlock (iSponsorBlock), picture-in-picture, dislike counts, and much more.

Installation requires AltStore or Sideloadly. You'll have to re‑sign every seven days on a free Apple ID unless you pay for the full dev license. If you watch YouTube daily, it's definitely worth it.