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Ask HN: What browser extensions are a must-have in 2021?

249 points by johnnyApplePRNG ↗ HN
I've had uBlock Origin and NoScript installed faithfully for the past few years at least...

Kind of annoying having to whitelist every website I visit on NoScript these days but worth it imho.

Just curious if there are any others out there I should check out.

315 comments

[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 351 ms ] thread
nathanaldensr
I stopped using NoScript because the micromanagement of domain names simply took too much time. I rely on Pi-hole to fill that gap somewhat.

To answer your question (Firefox on desktop and mobile):

- uBlock Origin

- Privacy Badger

- HTTPS Everywhere

- Enhancer for YouTube

- Multi-account Containers

- Owl

TomDavey
Also on Firefox. It appears that I'm not as privacy/security conscious as are most in this thread, but I heartily second HTTPS Everywhere.

However, the single Firefox extension that's indispensable to me is Tree Style Tabs. See: https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab.

Is it possible (for a Web page hoarder like me) to organize and access 500+ tabs across seven Firefox windows? You betcha it is, with Tree Style Tabs.

syntheticnature
I've played with Tree Style Tabs, but it seems like there's some configuration required for the optimal result. So I ask: have you done any configuration changes to it?
gammarays_
Also a TST user. It take some getting used to, I don't think I'll ever go back to using horizontal tabs. It is very much functional out-of-the box and it comes with a lot of preferences to choose from. However for a cleaner interface you'll have to customize your UserChrome.css.

This is what I'm using right now - https://pastebin.com/bKHM8hp9

lordnacho
I edited userStyles.css to remove the browser tabs from the top of the browser so that only the tst tabs are visible, plus in the tst preferences I added some css to highlight certain tabs such as email and slack. I also added some styles for suspended tabs and removed the a scrollbars.
carom
I change the theme and the opening tree behavior do it doesn't nest endlessly. I think I also put to open new tabs at the front of the children, so it is immediately preceding the parent. Just use it for a bit, the top tab bar is so silly.
LandR
I have custom css to hide the tab bar from the top.

I also shrink it down when the mouse isn't over it. See the screenshots for mouse out and mouse over look.

Mouse not over tree tabs: https://i.imgur.com/ikQhxTM.png Mouse over tree tabs: https://i.imgur.com/TyRds6V.png

Works well for me.

kartoshechka
In the same vein I'd recommend Sidebery https://github.com/mbnuqw/sidebery for tree style tabs.

It has more sane defaults, even some animations, very accessible customization (e.g. you can theme every bit of bar in extension settings, not needing to go to chrome.css). It's also can be used as a basic browser "window manager", given that you can't split window into panes, but you can have multiple tab groups in one window and quickly switch between them.

mkl
Can Sidebery import TreeStyleTabs tree data if I switch to it?
jmnicolas
> to organize and access 500+ tabs across seven Firefox windows

What motherboard did you get to have one terabyte of RAM? :D

mkl
Don't need anywhere near that much. On this 2012 PC with 32GB of RAM I have 3300 tabs open in Chrome and 3100 in Firefox. Plenty of RAM left over for other things too. I use The Marvellous Suspender for Chrome and Auto Tab Discard for Firefox to keep the memory and CPU use down. Session Buddy for Chrome makes it easy to manage them. I don't have anything as good for Firefox though (I'm using Session Boss, but would like something better).
temp0826
When ff is set to restore tabs on launch, it does not load them until you click on them. There are also extensions that allow you to unload tabs without closing them. I've never been a fan of bookmarks for whatever reason and tend to have many of the same tabs open for months at a time.
NylaTheWolf
Ah, a fellow Tab Hoarder! I've been using Firefox quite a bit lately and I really like Tree Style Tabs
nichos
I can't live without this one:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...

Blocks the "consent to cookies" modal sites are required to have thanks to some terrible legislation.

enriquto
Nice extension. But I'd say that the legislation is alright, it's these sites that are terrible. They put these modals because they want to.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
DocTomoe
The legislation has the right heart, but its wording is problematic and leaves up too much on interpretation, so most sites who technically wouldn't need it just default to a cookie banner to be 'on the safe side'.

Combine that with the zealots (I've had an user complain about the absence of a cookie banner on a site that clearly did not need one), them potentially becoming a lawsuit initiator, and you got the mess you have now.

Writing good laws without unintended consequences is hard.

[dead] taxyz23
And sometimes impossible so in many instances better not to legislate at all and let people work out their issues without the big clumsy hand of government.
enriquto
Yes. Moreover this law, while good intentioned, seems like a somewhat misplaced effort against tracking. Cookie tracking is easy to disable and not really worrysome. The elephant on the room is google play services tracking all android users with no way to disable it. Now, that should be forbidden by law.
TheCoelacanth
GDPR's consent requirements are actually about tracking in general, regardless of the method you use to achieve it, not about cookies.
Nextgrid
The wording of the GDPR is very clear: cookies required for essential functionality such as logging in or shopping carts do not require consent.
JimWestergren
Not needed if you use uBlock Origin
abainbridge
That's not what I see. With uBlock Origin installed, if I visit news.bbc.co.uk, for example, I still get the accept cookies banner.
Nextgrid
There are extra lists you need to enable. I believe the "annoyances" lists cover this.
spindle
I use a browser/OS combo that makes it very difficult to use any add-ons except for a DNS-based adblocker, and the only thing I miss is a password-filler-inner.
dartharva
Bypass paywalls clean

Ublock origin

Decentraleyes

Bitwarden

Also, turn on the privacy.resistFingerprinting flag in Firefox about:config.

invokestatic
resistFingerprinting has kind of a nasty side effect of making every website think you are in UTC. I put up with it, but I’m sure others may find it annoying.
treenurse
Ah, this explains why Uber Eats gives me ETA in UTC...
invalidname
Bypass paywalls clean seems really nice. Thanks!
dktoao
I like markdown here. Allows you to format you emails ( and other stuff ?? ) with markdown
tehnub
- uBlock Origin for FF and Chrome. For Safari (on both macOS and iOS) I use wipr.

- Dark Reader

acheron
+ to Dark Reader. Can’t stand most websites without it. Not sure how we switched from a dark screen to wanting everybody to stare into a bright lightbulb all day, but I’m glad things are finally going back.
jrockway
I was kind of forced into the Dark Reader way of life and I love it. I got a monitor with Adobe RGB color gamut. I have no use for this, and the OS doesn't understand it, so by default all colors are wrong. I know it's wrong and it makes me mad. So I put the monitor into sRGB mode. But in that mode, you can't adjust the brightness and so things are way too bright. I use dark mode for everything, though, so it's not too bad. The improved contrast ratio is actually excellent, and I much prefer a too-bright monitor in dark mode to a dim monitor in either bright or dark mode.

Dark Reader was the missing link for web designers that won't make a dark mode. Honestly, in a lot of cases it does a nicer job than the designer, so for a few sites I opt out of dark mode and let Dark Reader do it for me.

HN is one of the hardest sites to get right, however. It seems to change every version. My current configuration is: Dynamic, Contrast +20, Grayscale +100. I lose my topcolor, but everything else looks good. (This changed with a recent Dark Reader update. I had everything perfect, but the algorithm changed, and so I compromised on this. A few weeks in, and HN looks normal to me. If I saw the unmodified page, I don't think I'd know which site I was on!)

hawski
Good thing about Dark Reader is, that it is available for Firefox for Android.
ackatz
I use Safari with Adguard and 1Password.

After using Bitwarden for about 2 years, I recently switched to 1Password and it blows Bitwarden out of the water. Far more efficient and easier to use. A bit more expensive though.

karaterobot
Sponsorblock for Youtube: users mark segments of videos that have sponsored content, and the extension skips over them. It also skips past introductions and interaction reminders.
prohobo
I kind of object to this because it's directly messing with creators' efforts. Obviously I'm not telling people not to use it, but I think it's worth thinking about the channels/creators you enjoy - especially if they've been demonetized by Youtube.
Glench
The extension actually lets you customize the behavior based on the type of video segment. In your case you could configure it to not skip sponsored segments but skip other segments e.g. the non-music parts of music videos.
wildbook
I'm actually curious about this since I've never uploaded to youtube myself. Do the creators get statistics on segments that are commonly skipped, or is all information like that hidden?
prohobo
They know which parts people skip, the analytics is quite granular and viewable in their dashboards.
activitypea
Youtube already has ads. Yes, Youtube's revenue model is atrocious for creators, but running your own ads on top of their ads is really not the solution. LinusTechTips is the most egregious example of that. After sitting through two Youtube ads, I have to look at their preroll and postroll for sponsorships, as well as a midroll for another sponsor or their merch store. It just gets tiring after a while. I can't imagine how people who pay for Youtube Premium must feel.
kup0
I don't know, I look at it almost exactly in the opposite way. I used to block Youtube ads with uBlock and now use Youtube Premium, and ads that are baked into videos by creators themselves don't bother me.

The ads that are baked into the video don't have tracking code because they're just part of the video file, they aren't an extra javascript burden, often the sound/transition is far better and not so jarring-- really they're IMHO the least "bad" form of ads- better than the alternatives in almost every way- and often these ads are more relevant to the content and probably support the creator well.

I would much rather have a creator do sponsor spots in their video content than ever get served a javascript ad from some ad company.

handoflixue
How does blocking such an in-video ad hurt the creator? If there's no JavaScript, there's presumably no way of tracking "views", right?

It seems like the only harm is that I won't see/click the ad. But I think anyone who runs an ad-blocker is already the sort of person who won't click ads. Even if someone advertises something I'm super excited by, I'll want to take a few days to research the product - and I'm not going to go dig up the sponsored link when I decide to buy in.

kup0
I'm not actually saying that I agree that it hurts the creator, just listing the reasons that I don't bother blocking them. I am not necessarily against the idea of sponsorblock- I hate all advertising in general (and even despite this I still fall for ads I do see and check products out...maybe that makes me hate them even more) it's just that in-video ads are the kind of ads I am least inclined to go out of my way to remove or skip.

And, I can't tell you what the difference is- it seems it would be the same- but sponsor spots in audio-only podcasts bother me more than ones in videos. Maybe it's the length. The majority of the content I watch keeps sponsor stuff short- but the podcasts I listen to make a 5-10 minute infomercial out of them, so I do skip them more often in podcasts

As far as whether I think there's any harm to creators from skipping sponsored spots, it's possible that whatever statistics/analysis creators have access to on the platform might inform what they're able to tell their sponsors as far as views/etc. - but I don't know to what extent that goes

activitypea
>I would much rather have a creator do sponsor spots in their video content than ever get served a javascript ad from some ad company.

Me too, I just think it's gotta be an either or.

kup0
I think that's ideal, but will never happen, because aside from creators making money, YouTube wants to make money, and they won't make anything on ads built into the video
polishdude20
Yeah at some point, they're running more ads for sponsors because they want more money. Add another sponsor? Increase pay for their employees, buy new equipment etc. But at what point do you say "nah u don't want to support you THAT much, I won't watch the sponsored video"? Like, YouTube already pays them from YouTube premium subscriptions, at what point is the creator now just being greedy?
thefunnyman
Don’t most people just spam right arrow to skip through sponsor segments anyway? For me, sponsorblock just automates this process. As others mentioned, it’s pretty granule and has a lot of options for things like intros, intermissions, etc in addition to sponsor segments.
Eugeleo
I mean, it only messes with the efforts of the advertisers, right? Not that they can detect how many views the sponsored block has. Ofc if this becomes too popular, the ad industry will eventually catch up, but this is long ways away imho.
mrspeaker
Also "Youtube Video Skip Ad Trigger" is handy one for automatically pressing the "skip ad" button - so you don't have to!
shpx
If you use uBlock Origin, you shouldn't need it because prevents the ad from playing at all.
syspec
Hmm I def see ads on YouTube, is there maybe a setting I need to enable or ruleset? (I use the default )
volongoto
I use Firefox an uBlock origin and definitely don't see ads on YouTube. I don't have any other ad blocking extension installed.
Glench
+1 to Sponsorblock. It really improves Youtube.
decrypt
Dark Reader, 1Password, uBlock Origin, Stylus, SpeedUp, CSS Scan, Privacy Redirect, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. These are must-use for me, both in terms of personal life and work.
keithnz
Vimium, uBlock Origin, Violent Monkey
rohfle
uBlacklist by iorate (Firefox / Chrome) - hides google / ddg search results from unwanted domains (medium and pinterest) and highlights others (wikipedia and github)
AHASIC
thank god, finally a way to block codegrepper from my searches. fuck that site
johnxie
uBlock Origin, Stylus, and Dark Reader.
enriquto
If you are not into whitelisting you'll hate uMatrix. But uMatrix is great.
treenurse
I only use extensions with low permissions:

* Twitter to Nitter https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redire...

* Remove YouTube Suggestions https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-youtub...

* Reddit to Teddit https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-to-ted...

I enable:

* strict tracking protection

* privacy.resistFingerprinting

* First party isolation

I'm considering using libreJS.

detaro
not mentioned yet: Switch to audible tab - button that jumps through all the tabs that are currently playing audio (optionally also through tabs you have muted). Very helpful for either a) finding the tab with the conf call again or b) quickly finding whatever suddenly makes noise
rektide
Unmentioned so far:

* Form History Control (rip Lazarus Forms Recovery, Seth plz come back & open source it). https://stephanmahieu.github.io/fhc-home/Manual/manual/

* Multi-Account Containers in Firefox. Absolutely critical to mixing work/personal computing. I used to use profiles to split stuff up but harder to maintain. (oops already mentioned)

* React Developer Tools. Apollo Developer Tools. Instrumental to my development work.

* ViolentMonkey. Before Chrome finally blows up freedom & expression on the web: ViolentMonkey is a pretty good userscripting tool. https://violentmonkey.github.io/

* Open in Sci-hub. I came very close to weaping out loud when I found that these papers I have forever clicked on & wanted are easily within reach. I now have access to humankind's wisdom. https://roiarthurb.github.io/Side-Auto_Sci-Hub/

* Hypothesis. The greatest most pro-web tool humanity has ever imagined, by orders of magnitude. https://web.hypothes.is/start/

* Web Scrobbler. I love knowing what I listened to. Works great with usual suspects. So so results with individual online fm radio stations. https://web-scrobbler.com/

I really want to get good at a vim<->browser extension. Ideally just using a real vim session. I use Dark Reader all the time & it's amazing, just fantastic. I want a replacement for Share-a-holic that I trust, that let's me bookmark/send-to across multiple services (pocket, pinboard primarily); I don't trust share-a-holic. "Switch to audible tab" is useful in critical moments, which thankfully are not often. Extensions I'd like to find & get good at: semantic web extractors/breadcrumbers.

neilparikh
Unpinterested makes google image search a lot more usable, to the point that I get frustrated whenever I use image search on my phone now.
riffraff
Calm Twitter: it hides the number of likes and the trending stuff.

This greatly reduces the urge to get into Twitter arguments, and the aggravation the site induces, making it a pleasant pastime rather than a hate-inducing machine.

AHASIC
Chrome extensions i use:

adblock plus, google dictionary (just highlight a word and it will define it, or if it isn't an english word it will translate it to english), poper blocker, grammarly, "I don't care about cookies".

_smky
> adblock plus

i would suggest replacing that one with ublock origin since ABP has a very shady business model that directly interferes with their adblocking

abhayhegde
Vimium, uBlock Origin, Twitter to Nitter