Userscripts.org down for good? Here are alternatives
Userscripts.org has been down for more than three days as of today. In case you did not know, it is a popular directory for so-called userscripts which you can install in web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome to add, change or remove functionality from websites.
Even though its quality has deteriorated in recent time, it is still the go-to website for userscripts for many Internet users.
Especially spam and malicious script were pushed to the website regularly, and since it did not take much to get promoted on the frontpage, often ended up being installed by users who visited the website.
The userscripts.org team has not posted any information why the site is not available, which means that it could be anything from a denial of service attack over successful hacks to hardware errors or the shut down of the site.
Several issues are associated with the downtime. For one, there is no mirror of the site. If it is really gone, then a lot of userscripts that were only hosted on it are gone forever.
Update: It seems possible to access the site using this address: http://userscripts.org:8080/
Update 2: The site appears completely down. Someone set up a mirror site (userscripts-mirror.org) that you can access.
There are however alternative sites available that provide you with access to scripts. None is as big as the Userscripts.org website though which means that the selection of scripts is limited in comparison.
On the other hand, those sites appear to be maintained actively which means that you will not run into spam related issues on them, at least not for now.
Userscripts.org Alternatives
I have reviewed GreasyFork before here on Ghacks Technology News and suggest you read the extensive review here if you have the time.
The site is managed by the creator of the popular userstyles.org website. It has been created recently but features a good selection of scripts already.
What I like is that you can sort scripts by domain using the interface, and that it supports core features like code reviews, a version history and feedback option.
A couple of things are missing. If you want to read feedback, you need to go to another page as it is not displayed directly on the script's profile page.
Besides GreasyFork, there is also OpenUserJS.org which features just a handful of scripts currently. The script directory seems to be brand new as well which may explain why the site does not list lots of scripts right now.
Still, if you cannot find the script you are looking for on GreasyFork, you may want to give this one a try as it may have it listed.
A third and final option that you have is to search for userscripts on search engines such as Google or Startpage. Combine a site name or feature you are looking for with .user.js to find indexed scripts.
Please note that this will also list other types of pages, for instance those discussing userscripts. On another note, it is also important to be careful when it comes to downloading scripts from third-party repositories. It is a good idea to go through the code before you install any script using this method.
Closing Words
There is no 100% alternative to userscripts.org at the time of writing. If the site comes back up, someone should consider mirroring all the scripts that it is hosting just for the case that it will go down again in the future. A program like Httrack can do so.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.