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My uBlock Origin filters to remove distractions

github.com

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Re: My uBlock Origin filters to remove distractions

#41

Post by perihelions »

Tangentially: after you've blocked a very large number of ads and sidebars, one useful enhancement is to expand whatever text elements remain, to regain use of all that now-empty whitespace. Something like so:

    :xpath(//main/div):style(min-width: 80% !important)
(I've been looking at going a step further for some sites, by annotating a "column-count:" [0] rule and making the screen look like a newspaper. (Narrow columns for readability—multiple columns for "scan-ability"). Unfortunately, there's a lot more fiddling and tuning to this than I expected: it doesn't automagically work in the way you'd hope. Modern website DOM layouts are basically Superfund sites).

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/column-coun...

[late edit]: Here's a minimal example of "column-count:" injected by uBlock (on a website where it sort-of works)—this is what I'm trying to coerce other websites into looking like:

https://i.ibb.co/k3bRwhP/example-1.webp

    theguardian.com###maincontent:style(margin-left: -28vw !important; min-width: 90vw !important; column-count: 4 !important)
    theguardian.com##div:style(border: none !important)

Re: My uBlock Origin filters to remove distractions

#43

Post by hollerith »

GuB-42 wrote: post #30

You definitely should add news.ycombinator.com, all of it :)

I block only the "firehose" pages so I can continue to run search-engine queries over HN (using hn.algolia.com):

  ||news.ycombinator.com/|
  ||news.ycombinator.com/news^$document
  ||news.ycombinator.com/newcomments^$document
  ||news.ycombinator.com/newest^$document
  ||news.ycombinator.com/classic^$document
  ||news.ycombinator.com/front^$document
  ||news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments^$document

Re: My uBlock Origin filters to remove distractions

#45

Post by AlwaysRock »

This is cool. I did something similar at one point. Unfortunately these websites change their basic layout so often that it felt like these fixes would work for 1 month max then I'd have to configure again.

I ended up moving to news feed eradicator. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...

I let myself use reddit for 5 minutes every morning. It auto blocks the feed when those 5 minutes are up. Every other site I just leave blocked.

Re: My uBlock Origin filters to remove distractions

#46

Post by djcannabiz »

hedora wrote: post #40

Tangentially related: Has anyone tried the Orion Browser by Kagi for iOS? https://browser.kagi.com/ They claim to support Firefox and Chrome extensions (specifically, uBlock Origin). It's in beta. I'm surprised Apple hasn't blocked it yet, but I'd consider paying for a developer account just to install it on my phone (assuming it works).

Ive been using it on my laptop and phone. The phone version doesnt feel like it has enough polish yet. You can install it from the app store BTW, no need for a developer account. Ive been having problems with the app crashing, being unresponsive. However, the Mac version works 100% for me. I have ublock origin, bitwarden, bypass paywalls clean and sponsorblock installed. I havent noticed any issues and im very satisfied. I also really love the programable buttons feature, which let you define a button in the toolbar that runs some JS when you click on it (like a bookmarklet).

Re: My uBlock Origin filters to remove distractions

#48

Post by dcminter »

Mostly I'm using one of the default uBlock origin ones, but custom rules that have made (desktop) Facebook much pleasanter for me:

  www.facebook.com##div:nth-of-type(8):has-text(Suggested for you)
  www.facebook.com##div:nth-of-type(8):has-text(Reels and short videos)

Re: My uBlock Origin filters to remove distractions

#49

Post by thrdbndndn »

runjake wrote: post #20
notsylver wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren't just annoyances, they are core features of the sites.

So? Any corporation would argue that about the annoyances on their properties.

No they wouldn't?

Annoyances are mainly for things like cookie popup or copy-protection etc. I doubt companies would argue these are their "core features".

Re: My uBlock Origin filters to remove distractions

#50

Post by ronjouch »

Thanks! I do this all the time too :) . Makes for a more pleasant / less cluttered experience on sites I use a lot.

I'll add that another thing that is pretty easy to do is to add a Dark Mode to websites that don't have one. All you need is a userContent.css/uBlock rule like

    @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
        body {
            background-color: #111 !important;
            color: #eee !important;
        }
        /* etc, more stuff here depending on site */
    }
, and ta-da! Dark mode respecting your OS dark/light setting based on pref or time of day :)
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