Youtube TV Mode, Automatic Fullscreen Youtube Videos
YouTube is without doubt currently the most popular and known video hosting website in the world. The site, despite its popularity, lacks several features that may improve a visitor's usability considerably.
Two of the missing features that come to mind are the ability to select a specific minimum and maximum video quality automatically, and to save custom resolutions for videos so that all videos are played in that resolution if available.
While you can select if you want want to play HD videos or not on YouTube, you cannot specify a certain resolution that you prefer, nor a custom player size or even full screen playback by default.
A YouTube user who wants to view a video maximized needs to open it first before the option to switch to fullscreen viewing mode appears as part of the standard user interface. Doing that once may be inconvenient but manageable, but doing it a dozen times a day is everything but user friendly.
YouTube TV Mode is a lightweight userscript that will automatically load videos in full screen mode. A left-click on a video loads it in a new tab in the browser. Users who do not want to view all videos in full screen mode can middle-click a video, or right-click the video link and select to open it in a new tab to bypass the userscript automatically.
The video fills the full browser window regardless of its size and the video will always be loaded in HD format if available. This happens automatically without user interaction.
The developer has added an auto-pause feature to the userscript which pauses videos automatically if the video tab is not the active tab. And since videos are opened in new tabs they are automatically paused at least for the time it takes to switch tabs. This means that video data can be buffered in the meantime to reduce the chance of lags and stuttering.
The autopause feature can be disabled on the video screen in the upper right corner. The only remaining controls are to watch the video on YouTube, which loads the video in the normal YouTube interface and the standard YouTube video controls at the bottom.
YouTube TV Mode has been only tested in the Firefox web browser. It is likely that it will work in other browsers that support userscripts. Let us know in the comments if you have tested that. Firefox users need to install the Greasemonkey extension or Scriptish before they can install the userscript in the web browser.
Update: The userscript has been removed from the official Userscript website. An alternative is the excellent Yeppha Center for YouTube.
To configure it after installation click on the settings icon in the top right corner on YouTube. Here you find the following options:
- Player > Resolution to set a preferred resolution for videos on YouTube. Note that this resolution will only be picked if available, for obvious reasons.
- Player > Fullscreen Top Player to define the full screen playback mode. You can enable it by default, or only when videos are playing.
The script offers several other settings and features that you may find useful. Just check it out, it is awesome.
Update 2: Yeppha is no longer available. Use Magic Actions for YouTube instead which offers similar functionality.
I guess Softonic is also getting money from Google.
Wait till Shaun discovers chrome://flags/ and then the real how-to chrome article flooding will start…
I don’t think so. The real summary. If you need to use Chrome use it in Incognito Mode because it keeps track of your browsing history. Use Edge for your normal browsing. Edge keeps track of your browsing history for saving puppies:) Typical tricks, badmouthing the main competitor.
Really Shaun your writing “The Dark Web Awaits!” is the dark mode the same as the dark web?
Maybe dark mode was a better title?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_web
Or Brave shortcut with “-tor” parameter at the end.
The problem, is that I’m not sure which is less dangerous – Chrome or Tor?
Question marks after a declarative sentence is bad Grammer. See the headline. To use a question mark simply change the wording to a sentence, such as “How do you……”
@Shaun thanks for the articles!
“One of the best things about using Google Chrome is it keeps track of your browsing history.”
Considering the article topic I assume you mean browsing history in a broader sense, including things like tracking storage. Well even if that comment was restricted to browsing history only, not only it’s not Chrome specific but rather universal among browsers, but Chrome would instead be specific in making keeping history the worst possible feature among browsers. Because while most of the browsers (Chrome and Firefox for instance) misuse browsing history by exploiting it commercially for things like personalized advertising, so the more is kept the better for them, Chrome excels at it by uploading it unencrypted to Google servers often without the user even knowing.
“This mode disables local storage of site data, cookies, and browsing history.”
This is false. You are still being tracked by web sites (by local storage, cookies…) during your private browsing session, it just ends at the end of the session by a wiping of the tracking storage. Firefox has the same issue, and both by design. From:
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/7440301
“Cookies and site data are remembered while you’re browsing, but deleted when you exit Incognito mode.”
In fact, if it works like in Firefox, the tracking storage is even hidden to the user in the UI during private browsing but still here, creating the illusion that it is actually disabled, and even technical users often fall for this. The ability to limit, clean, auto-clean tracking storage, for instance with extensions, may also be limited in this mode. Personally I do not use it because it’s not private enough for this reason, giving up control on cookies ; I use normal mode with privacy tweaks.
A consequence is that browsers like Tor Browser that use mandatory permanent private browsing mode suffer from the same problem. In fact some update went further and totally removed the ability to block cookies and other tracking storage in the UI, while it’s still possible in Firefox in private browsing.
In private browsing modes a bit like in Tor Browser it seems that there is an underlying philosophy that it doesn’t matter that you every tiniest action is being scrutinized, analyzed, and used back against you by evil actors as long as there isn’t your real life name attached to the process. Personally, I disagree. This “loophole” is being heavily abused by surveillance capitalists in many other ways currently.
“One misconception people have is their data is kept private when using incognito mode. You should know that you can still be tracked and attacked by third parties. Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) can track your browsing history and block local websites according to your geography.”
I don’t think that the most common misconception about private browsing is that it would act like an antivirus and block attacks that target vulnerabilities.
What’s often misunderstood is rather that a lot of this mode aims at protecting from other users of the same computer, being a sort of “porn mode” for example. From the same Google reference:
“When you browse privately, other people who use the device won’t see your history.”
A typical example being the browsing history wipe, while such history is not accessible to web sites anyway, but could be to other local users. (well as discussed above it’s also accessible to browser companies while it shouldn’t be, and additionally for anti-user purposes, but that’s another issue). Or the cookies being stored in memory instead of on disk, which may address yet other privacy issues due to local attacks.
However it is also useful to partly limit web tracking (I would not call this “third party” as the author writes because this obviously also includes first party ie the browsed site) in addition to protecting from other local users, by wiping tracking storage at the end of the session. With the caveat above that during the session itself, tracking storage is not disabled. There are also typically other measures that are directed against tracking by web sites exclusively, that are enforced in private browsing mode.
And finally there is all the tracking by sites that happens without using the tracking storage itself, such as through fingerprinting or the IP address ; wiping storage at the end of the session won’t help with that, unless using Tor Browser.
Why use an incognito mode when you can use browsers with a pre-installed web proxy. The UtopiaP2P ecosystem browser is the best way for me to surf the web anonymously. If, like me, you value your anonymity and privacy, then I recommend using this browser.