Firefox @lemmy.world

10mo ago

Are there any addons as essential as uBlockOrigin?

I would love to find extensions that make me think "How did I live without this?"

109 comments

Consent-o-matic. Auto decline gpdr popups.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/consent-o-matic/
- Isn’t there a filter set for this in uBlock already? Annoyances filter?
  
  I believe it unlock just hides them and not very well.
  This will actively opt out of everything for you.
- Nice, I will definitely try this. Thanks.
- And fun fact, it's developed by Danish researchers:
  This add-on is built and maintained by workers at Aarhus University in Denmark. We are privacy researchers that got tired of seeing how companies violate the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Because the organisations that enforce the GDPR do not have enough resources, we built this add-on to help them out.
- This is awesome, thanks. Now that I have it installed I'd like to try it. Know any websites to test it out?
  
  Enable the plugin while using private mode and see how it handles Google, YouTube and a random news site.
- I've had much better luck with I still don't care about cookies. Maybe I was doing something wrong but C-O-M didn't seem to do much for me.

If you spend any time on YouTube sponsor block is handy
- Also DeArrow to replace the obnoxious thumbnails.
  
  I kind of like seeing the annoying thumbnails cause I find it correlates pretty good to the content I want to avoid
  
  Omg what! I got to test this, sounds too good to be true. Thanks.
- Also a great addon, though I use FreeTube, which has it built in.

Since it hasn't been mentioned - containers.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/
Essentially lets you keep have browser tabs with entirely separate cookies from each other (like if you opened it in a different browser). Helps me keep work and personal accounts apart, and also sandbox evil^tm webpages I'm forced to visit (by giving them their own container).
I almost forget it isn't included in firefox by default.
- I almost forget it isn't included in firefox by default.
  It almost is; the scaffolding is there but the addon is needed to turn the feature on.
  
  Yeah, it's a very nice way to avoid bloat in the base browser tbh!
- I just use different browsers. For example I use waterfox for all my ordinary browsing stuff. Social media, email work.
  And I use Firefox when I want to watch 8 cam girls at the same time while searching for weird Japanese vomit porn.

Dark reader. Dont wanna burn my eyes
- Started using this one recently and am loving it
- I use this one, great one

If you use YouTube...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/android/addon/sponsorblock/
Invaluable add-on IMO.
- Does it have exceptions? I watch Internet Comment Etiquette with Erik; the sponsored segments are usually the highest production value skits and are hilarious as fuck. Wouldn't want to block the new season of Knobbleberry.
  
  On the desktop browser, SponsorBlock also has a "Whitelist Channel" -- it's near the top of the SponsorBlock popup. Open the popup and you can add any channel you know you want everything from, while silencing the rest. Great add-on, IMO.
  
  Also has categories and options to auto skip or ask you to skip each catagory. A sponser is sponser. You can choose to also skip intros, recaps, end credits, self promotions (buy my shirt), or skip straight to the highlight of the video (great for the tutorial videos that are 5 minute back story and 10 second answer).
  Also consider an extension made by the same person, DeArrow. This one crowd sources non click-bait titles and thumbnails (using a screenshot from the video).
  Instead of "You won't belive they are keeping the technology to them selves" with a thumbnail of some dude, mouth wode open, pointing to a flying car next to some celeb.
  You'll see "Bob talks about AI images and his theoriess that aliens are hired by the government to do the 'Ai' work." with a thumbnail showing some random dude streaming.
  
  You can set it up
  Map Men also have great ad reads

As important? No.
But I also couldn't cope without my AutoplayStopper. I hate autoplaying content so much, especially on news sites.
- I thought you could disable that in the settings.
  
  Oh nice, must have missed that one.
- Firefox prevents autoplay automatically.
  
  Yep, apprently since 2019. I never knew.

ClearURLs is nice, it makes links a lot shorter and removes all the tracking junk from it. I also can't live without SponsorBlock and Return YouTube Dislike
- You can achieve ClearURLs directly in uBlock Origin.
  https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax#removeparam
  Can also add lists to your filters to assist. "Actually Legitimate URL Shortener Tool" and "ClearURLs for uBo" are the ones I am aware of.
  
  This was an amazing change as ClearURLs sometimes did mess with some sites.
  
  Thanks, I needed this 🌻

If you wanna go full degen then "Bypass Paywalls Clean" bypasses Paywalls on the websites with articles. Also "Old Reddit Redirect" is a must if you occasionally open page because it removes this stupid mobile app popup and goes around NSFW login requirement
- "Bypass Paywalls Clean"
  Make sure you use the updated fork!
  https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean
  
  Is there any working link?

Sponsorblock for YouTube

LibRedirect is pretty great. Everything from reddiot, fandom, youtube, imgur, google maps... (it's a long list)
has open source or alternatives that you get sent to instead of the big corpo tracking site. I love the fandom, reddit, and youtube redirects, because so many times I end up being linked to those. You can also turn off the redirect per site if you want, so if an invidious link (for example) just refuses to load, you can let youtube track you and see the video.
- I love it but always had problems with active redirect nodes going bad
  
  Try Redlib. I'm using it for quite some time now and never had a problem.

Decentraleyes prevents loading common scripts from big name CDNs. Requesting a script from a google-owned CDN with your google cookies and the current URL as the referrer is a way to spy on you.
Decentraleyes loads these common scripts from it's own cache instead.
- I often heard that Decentraleyes doesn't actually do anything 99% of the time. I don't know how true that is, though.
  
  aparently you know more than we here.
  i had to look it up,
  but aparently Decentraleyes isnt being maintained and grew more useless as the time went on.
  aparently localCDN is a better mantained alternative.

The second addon I install on new device: CookieAutoDelete https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/
It delete cookie. And you just clic and add exception for the website you want to stay loged in
- Firefox supports this natively. Under "Settings > Privacy and Security > Cookies and Site Data" set the "Delete site data when Firefox is closed" checkbox, and use the "Manage Exceptions" button to add websites you want to allow.
  
  I rather have the addon on my bar and clic it when I decide to add an exception
- You might also want Consent-O-Matic which sets your cookie prefs for most sites automatically.
  
  Ublock origin does this natively too.
  Settings > filter lists > cookie notices
- Didn't knew of this one. That a a great one

I still like my NoScript, sometimes I just take it as an indicator of who makes shitty sites.
If I end up on a site that's completely blank and it isn't important for me to interact with it, Ieave.
Surprisingly even news sites often load better than most others with NoScript disabling everything on them, I guess at the end of the day they still really need people to read them otherwise they'd become completely irrelevant?
I've seen complaints (Reddit I think?)that it just makes it cumbersome to do stuff when there are cascading lists of domain opening as you enable one, but if you're the kind of person that permanently whitelists all of them at that point, I don't think any amount of add-ons are going to save you, but I do like puzzles so I don't mind figuring out what needs to be toggled for site to work.
The big downside is making payments on sites with silly amounts of 3rd parties involved (Im looking at you Costco), but it's a bit better than it used to be when there was concern about getting charged twice, now it's more like...don't get charged and wonder why they didn't process your payment.
Edit: is it NoScript or ublockorigin that blocks ads on prime video? It's one or the other which is nice if you're watching something on pc rather than TV, I guess I should test.
- Ublock works fine for prime
- The big downside is making payments on sites with silly amounts of 3rd parties involved
  As a user of NoScript for many years, the easiest way to deal with this for me is to do my payments from a second browser. I have found LibreWolf to be really good as far as not blocking what it takes to do such a transaction but still blocking everything else very well.
  I don't like to use NoScript under purchasing/payment circumstances; multiple sites are often involved in payment processing and it's too easy to break what I didn't know was there under my usually very strict rules.
  Sure, I could just turn off NoScript for a site I want to do a financial transaction on, but instead of dicking around with it anymore I just use a different browser because the upsides are so good.
  Like online shopping: I shop on one browser, and login and pay on another, which also allows me to strip any unwanted affiliate links and tracking information from the URL when I do purchase something. I also get to see price differences between anonymous and logged in users, which is another game online retailers like to pay: logged off there is a low bait price, and logged in switches you to a higher price (Amazon does this by changing the recommended seller of an item; I just log in on the second browser and change it back, lol).
  Any different browser with NoScript turned off and secondary blocking (uBlockOrigin, uMatrix, etc) enabled will serve the purpose, if you're not interested in a puzzle one day.
  
  Thanks for the info, I definitely have to consider an alternative like that in the future.
  For the time being I tend to just enable 1 domain at a time temporarily and see if shit works, if it doesn't, disable it again. It works ok, as I've gotten used to seeing a specific few domains or commonalities between the payment type ones. But yeah probably similar to you I keep very few things allowed by default globally and have even begun reducing them lately.
  If it's a really big hassle atm I'll revert to chrome (didn't have to yet) since those fuckers already have my card details anyway, but luckily I don't really do all that much shopping online so not a huge issue....the most common thing I do is top up my travel card for local transport and I use it like once a month, so that probably tells you a lot.

SingleFile is very good for saving full pages with all their content as, well, a single html file.

I still don't care about cookies, Simple translate and Hoverzoom+. Sidebery is great too if you want a custom Firefox. Honorable mentioned, YouTube repeat button.
- YouTube repeat button
  Doesn't that just do what right clicking over the video player and selecting Loop does?
  
  You can add start and end, good for music videos. So you only repeat the part you need.
  
  Probably.

Bitwarden
- I prefer offline password managers like KeepassXC.
  
  Keep ass XC?

Privacy Badger, comes from the EFF.
OneTab is pretty great for tab addicts

I would yet like to find a good addon to block cookie banners reliably, and autoselect the most restrictive options
- I've found Consent-O-Matic to be pretty good.
- Same, that would be huge. I hope someday the EU will force websites to fulfill "do not track" requests.
- Try I still don't care about cookies. It works much better than C-O-M for me!

next to ublock i also use Decentraleyes
(further protection aganst tracking,
probably a bit less mobile usage,
and otherwise 0 impact)
video background play fix
(prevents youtube from stopping if my smartphone is locked)
ublacklist
(prevents sites you hate from appearing in your google search results (mostly fandom.com for me))
- Highly recommend using the NewPipe app for youtube if you are on android.
  
  I personally prefer staying in the browser.
  
  You want Tubular for Android TV though as newpipe doesn't work on it. Navigation is not great on Android TV, specifically on a video that's playing but you get used to it.

I'm a huge fan of AdNauseam, and TrackMeNot.

I don't think so
- Hmm, hab ich mir schon fast gedacht. :)

While we're on the subject, does anyone know of a way to block those scroll triggered pop-ups that are everywhere these days? You know the ones, you get a little bit down a page, then:
SIGN UP FOR 10 PERCENT OFF
JOIN OUR MAILING LIST TO FOLLOW US ON OUR JOURNEY
Any help is greatly appreciated.
- In the uBlock Origin Settings -> Filter Lists check lists named "annoyances" and "newsletters" or try other additional ones. That should help.
- You can try PopUpOFF. It's not perfect and can be over-aggressive at hiding legitimate popups but it's worth a try.

Surprised nobody already suggested some kind of mouse gestures extension. I use foxy gestures and once you learn a few gestures (starting with closing a tab and undoing it) it becomes hard to live without it! Gesturefy is also a popular alternative.
- Genuine question: How are gestures faster / more efficient than clicking a button, or using keyboard hotkeys? Or is this mainly for notebooks, tablets and smartphones?
  
  Compared to clicking a button I would say a lot faster as you don't have to move your mouse to start initiating your gestures. It's maybe more marginal compared to a short key. Still your hand is already on the mouse ready to execute a gesture. Personally I find it really convenient and for me it's the second most useful add-on after ublock. When using a browser on other computers that don't have these I find it really tedious and I am shocked at how much ad there is.

Behind the Overlay.

I have compiled the best recommendations in a list: https://lemmy.world/post/14173277

I still don't care about cookies

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/swift-selection-search/
"Swiftly access your search engines in a popup panel when you select text in a webpage."
- I have this one, very similar. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/right-click-search/

Tab Center Reborn (and some css to hide the top tab bar) for sidebar tabs.
- How it compares ro TreeStyleTabs?

uBlacklist is great for hiding horrid search results.
- He thanks, finally rid of userbenchmark.com results.

I don't want to say its name, cause I worry (maybe unnecessarily) about making it a target, but there's a downloader for YouTube that's the only extension I've ever paid for.
- You could have just used yt-dlp (open source): https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases

109 comments