I have to admit that I’m spending more time on Google Plus than I’m spending on Facebook. Not a big amount of time though, usually anywhere between 5 to 10 minutes per day. While I like Google’s new messaging service, I have spotted a few annoyances that I wanted fixed. One of the main ones was the commenting system. A fixed set of comments is automatically displayed on Google Plus which is problematic if you are not really interested in that particular message or the comments it has generated on the site. You had to scroll way down to the next message. Google recently tried to resolve the issue by limiting the number of comments shown to recent comments.
Enter Google Tweaks, a userscript designed to customize and optimize Google Plus. The developer has tested the userscript under Google Chrome and the Firefox web browser. Chrome users can install it right away on the project website, Firefox users can do so after installing Greasemonkey or Scriptish.
Reload or open the Google Plus page after installation. The script adds a new menu to the Options menu in the right upper corner of the browser. Just click on Options and select Google+ Tweaks from the menu to display the userscript’s customization options right on screen.
General Google Plus Tweask
- Favicon Badge – Displays the number of notifications, messages and alerts as a number in the user favicon.
- Full Width – Use the full browser width to display Google+ contents.
- Mute Button – Adds a button to one-click mute a post.
- Mute Notices – How to handle post muted notices (hide).
- Easy Mentions – Adds links to names in posts for easy referencing.
- Rollover Previews – Shows image previews directly on mouse over.
- Toggle Comments – Collapses all comments on Google Plus with options to expand the comment sections individually.
- Inline +1 and shares – Shows the number of +1s and shares inline directly.
- Thumbnails Only – Reduces all images in all posts to thumbnails.
- Fixed Navigation – Pin the Google Bar or entire navigation to the top so that it is always visible.
Hide Google Plus Elements
- Welcome Link – Hide the welcome link in the left column.
- Chat List – Hide the Google Plus chat list in the left column.
- Send Feedback – Hide the Send Feedback button.
- Mention Prefix – Hides the + symbol before mentions.
- Right-Column – Hide the right column.
- Suggestions – Hide people follow suggestions,
- Go Mobile – Hide the Go Mobile section.
- Send Invites – Hide the send invites section
The userscript has a lot to offer in terms of customizing Google Plus. I personally like the ability to toggle comments, enable rollover previews and the hide options to remove elements on the Google Plus page that I do not want to use.
Are you a Google Plus user? If so, are you using extensions or userscripts to customize your experience?
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Are you a Google Plus user?
Yeah I’m on Google+ but until I master the Brinkmann trick of time dilation (expanding a 24 hour day into 28 hours) it’s just another little side project I’ll get around to whenever I get around to it…….
Great tip. I’m leaning toward the conclusion Google+ will actually flower into the next Really Big Thing on the Interwebs.
My days are pretty busy, usually ;)
Hi Martin, Two questions regarding posting links/articles to Google Plus. This is only loosely related, but I can’t find an answer anywhere, so I thought I would ask you.
1) How does Google Plus determine the thumbnail for an article that a user shares?
2) How does a site publisher/webmaster ensure that Google Plus grabs the correct image from a URL? (I ask because I’m trying to fix a WordPress blog. I thought it was the either the Facebook og:image or link rel=”image_src”, but it’s not working for me.)
Big thanks from Berlin.
Daniel, the poster on Google Plus can select one of the images for the post. I have never looked at it closely but it probably picks the first image of the website’s content section first. I do not think that site owners have a say in which image is selected by Google Plus.
Martin, Thanks for the response. At this point, it looks almost random based on my experience. Back to the drawing board.
Does Google + Tweaks work on Chrome Canary as it’s a Beta ?
what will mute notices will do ?
How can I uninstall google plus tweaks
my google plus started having problems once installed. – won’t display videos in streams
I’m hoping to re-install for optimal experience
I searched in the internet but did not find a way to subscribe to stream in Google+ by email. In Facebook I can do it with www.thefriendmail.com. Google+ email notifications notify only of posts related to me, but not of all posts of people whom I follow. It would be nice to be somehow notified about all posts in my stream without logging in to Google+.