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Someone at YouTube needs glasses

jayd.ml

431–440 of 720 posts

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#431

You can insert (and tweak) this into uBlock Origin filters: ! YouTube Fix & Customization by Arch v1.8.4 ! (1/11) YouTube 4 Videos Per Row Fix (Home and Channel Pages) / YouTube Fix & Customization youtube.com##ytd-rich-grid-row, #contents.ytd-rich-grid-row:style(display:contents !important;) youtube.com##ytd-rich-grid-renderer, html:style(--ytd-rich-grid-items-per-row: 5 !important;) youtube.com##ytd-rich-grid-rende…

Didn't the new Chrome update break uBlock, or is that just for my test cell? I've been in mourning...

The following CSS equivalent worked for me, using the "Custom CSS by Denis" Chrome extension[1]:

    ytd-rich-grid-renderer div#contents {
      /* number of video thumbnails per row */
      --ytd-rich-grid-items-per-row: 5 !important;
    
      /* number of Shorts per row in its dedicated section */
      --ytd-rich-grid-slim-items-per-row: 6 !important;
    }

I first tried it with the "User JavaScript and CSS" extension, but somehow it didn't seem able to inject CSS on YouTube. Even a simple `html { border: 5px solid red; }` would not show anything, while I could see it being applied immediately with the "Denis" CSS extension.

If someone can recommend a better alternative for custom CSS, I'd be interested to hear it. I guess Tampermonkey could work, if you have that.

[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/custom-css-by-denis...

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also an issue on desktop web. YT will arbitrarily change the quality/resolution but doesn’t update the selector displayed in the UI. So for every single video I have to select 4K just in case YT might be serving it at 1080p or some other resolution even though it displays “4K” on the UI element. Also the compression algorithm is very aggressive and it works reasonably well for general content but for edge cas…

Actually, when I uploaded stuff on YouTube I’d notice sometimes that it was best to, even if the source footage was 1080p, upscale / upload it at 4k or 8k resolution so that people with sufficiently good internet could view it without as much compression. (In fact, when the original video uploaded is upscaled to 4k, even the 1080p version of the final video looks closer to the source footage) These were unlisted vide…

This definitely works. I've uploaded 720p drone footage (which already looked pretty crappy), and youtube avc1-encodes it with low bandwidth settings. The video looks like absolute garbage. If I upscale it to 2k (it has to be above HD for this to work), youtube will vp09-encode it and use a significantly higher bitrate, and the resulting video retains most of the original detail. I consider this a requirement for all of my uploads.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#433
post #64

On the extrapolation to zero videos by September 2026: it is already here. Seriously. Clear your cookies or open a private window. All of the videos are replaced by the message "Try searching to get started". Granted, as someone who clears cookies regularly, I like the change.

I like that too. It reminds me of the classic Google home page: just a search bar so you have to search to get started.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#434
post #49

Thank you for writing this post! I opened youtube a few days ago to this as well. On a 24" 1440p monitor its ridiculous. It's incomprehensible there's a UI/UX team that gets paid millions of dollars per year and the result is changes like this. Thank you again for writing this post. After searching it seems like they've been "testing" this in segments for a while now. As a result I installed the "Control Panel for Yo…

It's infuriating that a plugin/extension is needed to bring back what should be the a setting, if not the default, in the UI for this.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between shorts, search results, the ads, and the content...I treat youtube links like pinterest links these days. Basically, I'll only click it if I think I really, really need to see it. By 'content' I mean the fact that every video has a moron talking for 10 minutes at the beginning. You can search up something as simple as how to tie a shoe, find a promising video with a lot of likes, then click it. Gotta start wi…

There's a million videos uploaded to YouTube each second. If you're only seeing low quality videos it's because you're only looking in the wrong places.

I don't doubt good videos exist - I'm blaming YouTube for boosting the awful ones so it's all I see in my first page of search results, and the 'creators' who make them.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#438
post #324
post #49

Thank you for writing this post! I opened youtube a few days ago to this as well. On a 24" 1440p monitor its ridiculous. It's incomprehensible there's a UI/UX team that gets paid millions of dollars per year and the result is changes like this. Thank you again for writing this post. After searching it seems like they've been "testing" this in segments for a while now. As a result I installed the "Control Panel for Yo…

Most likely what happened is some MBA ran a short A/B test of smaller vs. bigger video thumbnails, and the A/B results showed more "engagement" with the larger size thumbs, and so, of course, to meet his/her performance goals, the MBA had the page altered to the version that showed "more engagement".

I think it also helps them figure out which videos keep people on YouTube longer. If I scroll to a section of the page that has 6 videos, and I stare at them for 10 seconds, then scroll down, they'll know that one or two of those videos must have been somewhat interesting. But if I stare at 6 videos, then scroll away 2 seconds later, it knows that nothing in that batch was worthwhile.

The fewer videos they have in focus at a time, the more accurate their algorithms can be.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#439
post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kills me with the autoplay (at least on mobile), is that the video continues from where it was when you click it. But the autoplay had no sound, and I probably didn't watch it closely. So I always have to scroll back to the beginning, as I've just now been put in the middle of a sentence a bit into the video. Especially for channels which actually gets straight to the point (like Numberphile) it's annoying. Such…

What's even more insane is that if you hover a video for 5 seconds it thinks you "watched" it and it goes into your watch history.

Does the creator get credit for that? I've got a few friends that need a few million views and I could easily write a mouse driver to take care of that.

Re: Someone at YouTube needs glasses

#440
post #46

For a long time the grid of videos on the homepage has been slightly misaligned. I imagine the different rows belong to different teams. This means you can't hover your mouse in the gaps between columns while you scroll to prevent videos autoplaying when moused over. I find the autoplay so annoying because it hides the thumbnail which was carefully designed to communicate why I should click on the video and replaces…

What kills me with the autoplay (at least on mobile), is that the video continues from where it was when you click it. But the autoplay had no sound, and I probably didn't watch it closely. So I always have to scroll back to the beginning, as I've just now been put in the middle of a sentence a bit into the video. Especially for channels which actually gets straight to the point (like Numberphile) it's annoying. Such…

YMMV. If I trigger autoplay, it's almost always on purpose, and I tend to read the subtitles. Jumping into the video right where I was works well for me! Losing my position would be very annoying.
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