YouTube is one of the world’s largest video-sharing websites. YouTube has over a billion users — almost one-third of all people on the Internet.
It is truly a global platform for viewing, sharing, and downloading videos.
This blog post will list some of the best Chrome extensions for use with YouTube.
Best Chrome Extension For Youtube
YouTube is undoubtedly the most popular video streaming platform out there and while it packs in some very cool features, what if you could get more out of it? If you are like me, you use YouTube mostly on your browser. If you are using Chrome, you must be aware of the plethora of extensions available for the Google browser. There are Chrome extensions to enhance the Gmail experience, customize tabs and more. Also, there are various Chrome extensions aimed at making your YouTube experience better. Well, here are the 10 best YouTube Chrome extensions you should use:
1. Magic Actions
Magic Actions is an all in one Chrome extension that adds dozens of handy features in YouTube. Some of its prominent features include the ability to control volume with mouse wheel or right-click, take video screenshots, preview video & its ratings, day/night mode, cinema mode with different themes, control buffer, bypass country restrictions and much more.
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Magic Actions add a button in the address bar that is only visible when you open YouTube. You can click on the button and then go to ‘Options” to configure all the features. Every feature has its own set of options, so that you can totally customize your experience.
2. Turn Off the Lights
While Magic Actions offers the cinema mode feature, where the background is dimmed and video is put in focus, it is fairly limited. The Turn Off the Lights extension offers the theater mode feature with loads of customization options. You have full control over the opacity of the faded background and you can also automate the process. Additionally, you can change the color of the fade to any color you like, so you are no more limited to the Black fade color.
Some of its other features include, night mode for easy browsing in the dark, screensaver, password protection, camera motion detection, voice commands and more. Furthermore, these features work on all the web pages; it is not just limited to YouTube.
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3. SmartVideo
If you have a slower internet connection, which results in videos on YouTube to be forever stuck in buffering, you should give SmartVideo a try. It’s a buffer control extension that gives you full control over how the buffering of a video works. You can configure the extensions to make sure YouTube videos start buffering as soon as the page loads, instead of waiting for the video to start. It can also automatically play the video when buffering is complete, or play it when it knows that the video will play smoothly afterwards (based on your internet speed)
Apart from buffer control, it also has many other additional features such as loop all videos played, hide annotations, configure video quality and hide player settings. Furthermore, SmartVideo works on both videos in YouTube and videos embedded on other websites.
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4. GIFit!
Like GIFs? You can easily make GIFs out of YouTube videos and share them with anyone you like. Although YouTube natively lets you create GIFs out of videos, it is a bit complicated and lacks customization options. You should give GIFit! a try, if you are serious about creating GIFs out of YouTube videos. It works right from the YouTube video player and you can just click on the “GIFit” button in the bottom bar to get started. GIFit! lets you set the start and end time of a GIF and also adjust height, width, frame rate, and quality. When done, click on the red GIFit! button to create and download the GIF.
5. Video Blocker
If you are tired of seeing videos from a channel you really hate or find inappropriate, you should use the Video Blocker extension. It lets you block all the videos from a specific channel, and the videos will never be shown to you again. It will remove the videos from your search, recommendations and any other part of YouTube and make it like they were never even there.
To block videos, simply right-click on any video from the channel you want to block and select “Block videos from this channel”. Additionally, you can also use keywords, wildcards and channel names to block channels and specific types of videos.
6. Video Preview
YouTube videos usually have a single display picture to tell you what it’s about, but it can be a little hard to guess the content it features. Video Preview extension lets you see three preview images picked from a video to give you an idea of the content it offers. On top of that, it also shows you a bar on the bottom of the featured image suggesting the likes and dislikes on the video. Overall, the Video Preview extension can save you a lot of time that would have been otherwise wasted when you click on a video only to find that it’s not worth watching.
7. BriefTube
Like Video Preview, the BriefTube Chrome extension makes sure you don’t waste your time on videos that only look good on the outside. BriefTube creates a summary of what a video offers and lets you directly jump to the video part that is relevant to you. The summary creates an outline of the topics in the video along with the time stamps, so that you can click on the topics to directly move to it in the video.
Unfortunately, BriefTube only works on videos, which have English subtitles, are HTML5 and longer than 5 minutes. To sum things up, the extension is best for educational videos featuring chapters, so that you can easily switch between different chapters.
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8. YouTube Plus
YouTube Plus is another very cool Chrome extension for YouTube, which offers multiple features similar to Magic Actions along with its own unique offerings. Its features include infinite scroll in feeds, different video layouts, static audio volume, ability to select video quality, change volume with mouse wheel, prioritize HTML5 player and more.
YouTube Plus also lets you automatically create a playlist of the top 20 videos from your subscriptions list. Additionally, you can also block videos from specific channels with the help of a built-in block button.
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9. Ratings Preview
As the name suggests, Ratings Preview shows you the rating (likes and dislikes) of all YouTube videos under the video thumbnail as a bar. While the Video Preview extension can also do the same, Ratings Preview offers more customization options and additional features. You can change the bar’s thickness, color and opacity to suit your taste. It also has built-in RP score system that uses different algorithms to determine how good a video is and gives them 0-10 rating.
Furthermore, Ratings Preview also highlights videos with the highest rating on a page, so that you can quickly skim through the list and find the best ones.
10. Smart Pause
Smart Pause is a pretty cool Chrome extension for YouTube. What it does, is it automatically pauses a YouTube video when you leave the tab and resumes the video again when you come back to the tab. So, if you always tend to miss out on videos because you have to open a different tab, Smart Pause is the perfect tool to ensure you never miss a video while also continuing to work on other things. In my experience, Smart Pause was very good at pausing the video and it paused and resumed the video instantly.
best extensions for youtube creators
WeVideo
WeVideo
This is my favorite online video editor, especially due to its ease of use. This tool makes it easy to create and edit videos professionally and makes them accessible from anywhere. And it offers the following features for video creators like you:
Features turn-by-turn collaborative editing from any place on any device.
Allows to record and add a voice-over to the video clip using webcam and mic.
Avails different editing modes for beginners and professionals namely Storyboard and Advanced Timeline, offering ease and power respectively.
Supports connecting to cloud services and taking media files directly from Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dailymotion, Box, and Dropbox.
Lets you publish videos on YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Dailymotion, etc., or share them on social media sites or embed them on your website out of the box.
Pro Mode for YouTube Video Editor
Pro Mode for YouTube Videos
If you use the YouTube’s editor to do most of the editing stuff, then this tool will help you do more using shortcuts. This handy tool enhances and improves on the YouTube’s built-in video editor with keyboard shortcuts and other productivity features like:
Adds various buttons and notifications to make you get and know things faster.
Allows to sort photos, navigate the timeline, select tabs and do various other tasks without losing the current selection in the editor, using just the shortcuts.
Playback control takes control of the preview player and is controlled by a separate playback button and a slider, which allows editing and scrolling in the locked mode.
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Record and convert videos directly
In this section, I’ll share the extensions that help to create videos using your webcam and convert them various video formats. These tools even support compressing those videos for faster upload experience without using any third-party tool.
Clipchamp
Clipchamp
As per my experience, this Chrome extension is a reliable video converter and compressor. It compresses videos without affecting their quality and works using a simple drag and drop interface. Here are other salient features of Clipchamp:
Allows you to create a short link to request and collect videos from anyone, which can be queued and uploaded directly to your YouTube channel or Google Drive.
Its webcam recorder records the video in 360p, 480p and 720p resolutions right from your browser, which helps vloggers create video blogs easily.
Nimbus Screenshot & Screen Video Recorder
Nimbus Screenshot & Screen Video Recorder
A simple but powerful screenshot taker for everyone, this extension helps capture web pages in a clean and user-friendly interface. That’s not all, it also records videos from your screen and has other features like:
Add and edit objects like stickers and text boxes in the screenshot.
Captures whole or part of web page and records a video from a tab or screen.
Lets you edit and manipulate the screenshot, and save it in JPG and PNG formats.
Allows saving to various third-party tools like Nimbus Note, Slack and Google Drive.
Screencastify
Screencastify
Screencastify packs in various features to record screenshots and screencasts. All features, however, are not included in its lite version like it only records 20 min. videos. It’s simple to use like Nimbus, and offers the following features:
Records a specific tab in your browser or the whole computer screen.
Creates WEBM and VP8 videos with audio and lets you save it locally.
Allows saving the files to Google Drive and publishing directly to YouTube.
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Upload and publish videos
This section talks about the tools that help in uploading, publishing and sharing videos with others easily, using just a web browser. These extensions also help publishing videos directly from online storage providers like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.
YouTube Uploader for Dropbox, Drive
YouTube Uploader for Dropbox, Drive
This one-of-its-kind extension needs no explanation — its name tells you all. It allows you to upload and publish video files from Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive to YouTube directly. It works locally in your browser, and offers the following features:
Allows uploading video files in batch mode without using the YouTube’s web interface.
Supports numerous video formats like WebM, MP4, AVI, WMV, MOV, MPEG4, MPEGPS, FLV and 3GPP.
Manage channels and optimize videos
In this section, I will talk about the most important tools in your journey from being a “YouTube creator” to a “popular YouTube creator”. These extensions will transform the way you manage your channels, and provide lot more help to optimize them easily than ever.
Moreover, these help perform time-consuming tasks like updating annotations and info cards, managing comments and creating thumbnails and backups in just a few clicks.
TubeBuddy
TubeBuddy
TubeBuddy is my most favorite YouTube tool that works as a channel manager and a toolkit for optimizing videos, making it an absolute must for YouTube creators. This adds a layer of numerous functionalities on top of YouTube such as:
Provides find/replace and bulk update features to update the descriptions, social profiles, hyperlinks and references on the videos.
Helps generate customized, professional-looking thumbnails with the help of screenshots and branding or text layers for the videos.
Allows you to engage and collaborate with new subscribers and fans efficiently as well as export the list of your subscribers and their profiles to a CSV file.
Generates a detailed analysis of your competitors’ views, subscribers, uploads per day and engagement channels — all in nice, tabular form in CSV format.
vidIQ Vision
vidIQ Vision
As per my experience, this extension delivers a comprehensive optimization report showing key insights of everything the top creators do to drive traffic and growth. It helps you boost subscriber engagement and create viral videos for them. And it gives creators access to statistics more than just total views of a video, and more such features like:
“vidIQ Score” ranks every video, which helps to evaluate the probability of a video being endorsed in related search or recommended videos.
Average watch time helps you understand the quality of your videos and how well they keep viewers engaged, and thus drive success on your channel.
Velocity (views per hour) tells about the videos gaining viral traction and their acceleration in popularity, making it clear which are the rocking videos.
Social media statistics shows the number of likes, shares, comments, and tweets for your videos gathered from various social channels including Reddit.
VISO Catalyst
VISO Catalyst
This section isn’t complete without VISO Catalyst, a platform that helps you to discover the popular videos, their optimization strategies and analytics — all to guide you about creating awesome, viral-worthy videos. This platform is, unfortunately, only available for partners of BBTV or an associated network, and includes following features:
Title optimizer ensures the videos possess concise, searchable titles.
Thumbnail editor creates beautiful thumbnails using backgrounds, graphics, and text for videos, and allows downloading them for posting to social media.
Intelligent keyword recommendations help you improve titles, descriptions, and tags for your videos to make them as user-friendly and searchable as possible.
Manage and optimize social media
Here’s the description about some tools that help to track and manage social media integration, which seems almost impossible to do manually, at least to me. With these tools, you and your team can work collaboratively to manage various social networks.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite
It’s by far the best and only solution that empowers your business and helps you capture more value via social channels. The tool supports in managing brand reputation, running social media campaigns, engaging with viewers and even collaborating internally with your creative team. But it’s not all and here are more things it can do:
Saves time by allowing to manage all social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ from a single dashboard.
Measures the social ROI, spots developing trends and reports how your videos are performing with competitors through real-time reports.
Helps connect with customers faster and smarter, and enables you to respond instantly by monitoring opinions and reviews about your brand.
Allows inviting multiple collaborators to manage social profiles and streamline team workflow using scheduling and assignment tools and much more.
Check video details and statistics
This section discusses about the Chrome extensions that allow access to in-depth video insights showing videos’ details and statistics. This insight helps creators in understanding and improving brand awareness, lead generation, and online user interaction.
Heartbeat
Heartbeat
Out of the tools I tried, Heartbeat is the best tool that allows creators to connect to the YouTube community as well as to track and view subscriber growth. It also displays others details like video age, count, channel as well as monetization owner and social media stats for your videos. And below are some of its important features:
Offers YouTube real-time chat system with the ability to create chat rooms for people with similar interests to hold discussions and share videos.
Provides the creators with channel analytics having metrics like earnings, viewership and subscriber growth of their channel and the competition.
Its tag finder allows creators to tag their videos with trending, SEO-friendly keywords, which help the people to find preferred or related content faster.
Social Blade
Social Blade
This extension helps YouTube creators to track user statistics for YouTube as well as social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and others. Social Blade makes user analytics, growth, and trends simple to understand for creators, and includes features like:
Provides social analytics for any content, creator, brand or live streamer.
Provides user and trend statistics for any video or channel on YouTube.
Provides financial stats including estimated monthly and yearly earnings along with future projections in numerical format as well as easy-to-read graphs.
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Sum and substance
Among all these Chrome extensions, I find TubeBuddy, Hootsuite and Heartbeat are the must haves for every YouTube creator — beginner or advanced. And if you don’t use a powerhouse video editor, then WeVideo and Clipchamp also prove helpful for creating videos.
Conclusion
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