Unhooked

Open-source browser extension that hides distracting parts of YouTube (recommendations, Shorts, comments, end screens, and more). Inspired by the idea behind “distraction-free YouTube” extensions; not affiliated with YouTube or Google.

Install (development)

Chrome / Edge / Brave

1. Open chrome://extensions (or edge://extensions).
2. Enable Developer mode.
3. Click Load unpacked and choose this folder (unhooked-opensource).

Firefox

Firefox uses Manifest V3 with slightly different packaging. This repo currently ships a Chromium MV3 manifest. For Firefox you can try temporary installation after adjusting manifest.json per Mozilla docs, or track a follow-up manifest.firefox.json.

Publishing to Chrome, Brave, Firefox

Brave uses the same extensions as Chrome — publish once on the Chrome Web Store; Brave users install from there (there is no separate Brave store). Step-by-step for Chrome Web Store, AMO (Firefox), zips, icons, and privacy policy: see docs/PUBLISHING.md.

Usage

1. Pin the extension if the toolbar icon is hidden.
2. Open YouTube, click Unhooked, and enable the toggles you want.
3. Use the power control in the popup header to pause the extension entirely (no CSS hides applied).
4. Theme cycles system → dark → light (stored separately from YouTube options).
5. Refresh the tab if something looks stale after a YouTube UI update.

Options (Unhook-style parity)

Grouped toggles match the commercial Unhook layout where possible: video sidebar (recommended, live chat, playlist, fundraiser), end screen feed vs end screen cards, comments (+ profile photos), video info (buttons, channel, description), top header (notifications), inapt search clutter, explore/trending, more from YouTube (guide links like Premium, Music, Studio), subscriptions (guide link only — not your subscriptions feed page), mixes, merch/tickets/offers, autoplay, annotations/cards teaser.

Edit the Donate / Request feature / Support URLs in popup/popup.html (#linkDonate, etc.) to point at your own links.

Permissions

• storage — save your toggle settings locally.
• Host access — youtube.com, m.youtube.com, and youtube-nocookie.com only, to inject hide rules on the site and in embeds.

Limitations

• YouTube changes the DOM often; some selectors may need updates over time.
• Autoplay off clicks the in-player autonav control when it appears (best effort, not guaranteed on every layout).
• Hiding “home feed” targets the main grid on the home page; other tabs are unchanged unless you enable a matching rule.
• Hide subscriptions removes the Subscriptions item from the guide only; it does not alter /feed/subscriptions content when you navigate there directly.
• More from YouTube hides common guide links (Premium, Music, Kids, Studio, etc.); adjust selectors in content/styles.css if YouTube changes URLs.
• Disable annotations mostly targets legacy card teasers / branding; true in-video annotations are largely gone on YouTube.
• Hide recommended / related column hides only the related-videos UI (not the whole right column), so live chat replay can stay visible. If chat still does not appear, try turning off other sidebar-related options or refresh after a YouTube UI update.

Automated tests

From the repo root (requires Node.js 18+):

npm install
npm test
npm run test:coverage   # optional; see note below

The suite includes 70 cases: options merge/migration, mapping ↔ option parity, unhookedApplyOptionClasses behavior (VM + mock DOM), styles.css ↔ mapping parity, manifest.json + on-disk assets, popup.html IDs, and content-script wiring.

Coverage note: shared scripts run inside vm.runInContext (same as in the browser), so V8 does not attribute line hits to those files — the coverage report is informational, not a full line metric.

CI runs npm test on every push and pull request (see .github/workflows/ci.yml).

Manual QA checklist

• Watch page: related column, comments, description, channel row, actions.
• Live stream: chat hidden when enabled.
• Home: grid hidden when enabled.
• Shorts entry in guide and Shorts shelves on home/search.
• End screen overlay after video ends.
• m.youtube.com watch + home (mobile layout).
• Embedded player on another site (youtube-nocookie / youtube iframe).

License

MIT