I have noticed as of late how clunky YouTube has become. The “dynamically loading content”, which I don’t remember asking for, has these weird pulsating boxes and you have to wait longer to get what you want. In what world does slower loading text make sense?
A Solution Presents Itself
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Linux Action News, and on episode 64, one of the items discussed was this YouTube Classic extension and how having it installed improves load times. I was interested in trying it. I installed the extension through the Add-on manager and boom, done, nothing else to do but enjoy the reduced wait time with YouTube. Visually, it takes YouTube back a few years to, what I consider, a much better YouTube experience.
Interestingly, there is a Chrome extension but Google has decided to remove it from the Google Chrome Web Store. One could draw the conclusion that Google prefers a less efficient YouTube experience. It is still possible to “side load” the extension. You can read more here on the GitHub page if you are interested. I have been drifting away from using Chrome so it is not really a priority to get it working.
Final Thoughts
Although, I have increased the usage of the Falkon browser, I still prefer to use Firefox for YouTube for the Plasma Integration plus KDE Connect which allows me to start and stop YouTube from the phone or my not-so-fancy Bluetooth headphones (no KDE Connect necessary for that).
If you are annoyed by pulsating boxes of dynamically loading content and want a more zippy static feel, this is most certainly the extension to have in Firefox. It would be fantastic if I could fix all websites “dynamic content” but that is not available… yet…
Further Reading
YouTube Classic Extension GitHub page
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