Aar318's YouTube Notifier

Track public YouTube channels for livestreams, video uploads, and Shorts without account authentication.

**📡 Aar318's Live, Upload, and Shorts Notifier for YouTube™** Track public YouTube channels for livestreams, regular video uploads, and Shorts without signing in or connecting a YouTube account. YouTube Notifier adds a draggable **Streamers** control and responsive dashboard with live status, optional content alerts, favorites, viewer counts, notifications, backups, session activity, and private local insights. **🚀 Getting Started** 1. Install the extension and pin it from your extension menu for easy access. 2. Open a YouTube channel and click **+ This Page**, or use the extension-icon menu to add the current channel. 3. Open the **Streamers** dashboard and choose livestreams, video uploads, and/or Shorts from the first-run screen, or import an existing JSON backup to restore your channels and settings immediately. 4. Allow notifications when prompted so the extension can alert you when a tracked channel goes live or publishes selected content. 5. Leave the extension running—favorite-first background checks continue automatically at the selected interval. **✨ New Features (v1.5.0.0)** - **Bug Fix:** Automatically split larger compressed browser-sync backups into verified parts, overcoming the single-item limit while preserving the previous copy if upload fails. - **Improvement:** Simplify backups with a default-on Browser sync checkbox, followed by Export and Import on separate rows; keep advanced sync and restore controls out of the way. - **New Feature:** Default-enabled automatic browser-profile sync for eligible preferences, with clear status and a choice when copies differ. - **New Feature:** Backup & Restore provides portable preference files, validated imports, and a local safety copy before restores. - **Improvement:** Keep sensitive saved data and temporary state local; show the exact backup scope and size-limit errors. - **Improvement:** Sync preferences and tracked channels while keeping live status and notification-delivery history local. **⭐ Key Features** - **Preference backups:** Browser-account sync enabled by default, explicit conflict resolution, portable preference files, and a local safety copy before restores. The backup page identifies excluded saved data. - Apply holiday colors before showing the Streamers control and approve website access together. - **Authentication-Free Public Tracking:** Track YouTube channel URLs, `@handles`, and channel IDs through public page data without OAuth, account access, or a developer API key. - **At-a-Glance Toolbar State:** An original Signal Lantern uses a gray lens when no tracked channel is live and a green lens when one or more are live, while the separate badge shows the exact live count. - **Optional Upload and Shorts Alerts:** Opt selected channels into regular-video and/or Shorts tracking. Each content type uses its own quiet baseline, verified publication dates, stale/reordered-item rejection, persistent missed-content highlighting, click/middle-click/right-click or dedicated-button acknowledgement, and shared notification, quiet-hours, favorite-sound, and duplicate-prevention controls. - **First-Run Tracking Choices and Restore:** Choose livestreams, regular uploads, and Shorts during setup, or import an existing backup without first completing an empty setup. Dismissing the chooser safely defaults to livestreams only, and all choices remain editable in Settings. - **Add the Current Channel:** Use **+ This Page** beside an untracked channel name or the extension-icon menu to add or remove the current channel. - **Favorite-First Scheduled Checks:** Favorites are checked before remaining channels with bounded concurrency. Live, upload, and Shorts checks share the selected background interval instead of slowing down channel setup. - **Live, New-Content, and Offline Views:** See prioritized unseen uploads/Shorts above grouped online and offline sections, use a compact All/Live/Uploads/Shorts filter with pending counts, and switch among Full, Mini, and Compact densities. - **Session Dashboard:** View newly live, newly uploaded, newly posted Shorts, recently ended, longest-live, and rising-viewer activity for the current browser session. - **Desktop Notifications:** Receive click-to-open alerts with duplicate prevention, grouped startup summaries, snooze controls, quiet-hour suppression, and optional favorite sounds. - **Live Cards:** View thumbnails, stream titles, status, viewer counts, favorite controls, direct links, and optional user-started preview actions. - **Audio and Stream Previews:** Supported streams can use compact audio controls or in-panel video; channels that block embedded playback receive a direct live-page fallback. - **Search and Management:** Search tracked channels, clear fields quickly, favorite creators, remove entries, trigger immediate checks, and import detected channels from YouTube's followed-channel page. - **Responsive Densities:** Full provides large cards, Mini provides smaller cards with two per row on normal phones, and Compact removes thumbnails for a dense list. - **Mobile-Friendly Drawer:** Uses touch-friendly controls, device safe areas, stable scrolling during updates, and desktop/mobile channel-owner detection. - **Snooze and Quiet Hours:** Choose preset or custom snooze durations, recurring schedules, current-period skipping, and optional favorite-alert bypass. - **Exclusions:** Hide the optional off-site overlay on matching domains, paths, or wildcard patterns with current-page verification. - **Appearance Controls:** Includes dark/light mode, the full seasonal calendar with current/next-theme dates and active ranges, consistent seasonal accents, separate panel/card/highlight/font/button colors, reset/randomize tools, opacity controls, draggable positioning, reset position, and an optional attached lock. - **Cross-Extension Placement:** YouTube Notifier and Stream Notifier avoid occupying the same off-site position when both floating controls are enabled. - **Backup and Reset Protection:** Supports manual and differential automatic backups, configurable retention, restore/download actions, imports/exports, and recovery after reset. Current tracking categories and per-channel upload/Shorts choices are preserved. - **Health and Debug Tools:** View last check, next-check countdown, favorite priority, tracked/live totals, viewer totals, recent issues, and an expandable timestamped debug console. - **Private Insights:** Reveal **Stats for Nerds** for local live/upload/Short totals, unseen content, notification and link-opening activity, timing records, peaks, streaks, the tracking start date, and a 14-day activity chart. Its visibility remains selected until hidden. - **Toolbar and Action Shortcuts:** Open the dashboard from the pinned extension icon on ordinary supported browser pages, or use its menu to add/remove the current channel, trigger a check, manage notification sleep, or access support actions. Clicking outside dismisses the dashboard unless debug mode is enabled. **🔐 Permissions & Privacy** **Browser profile sync and preference backups:** Open Backup & Restore from the toolbar context menu or settings. Sync is enabled by default unless you turn it off. Use the same browser account with extension synchronization enabled; If your browser requests optional sync data permissions, approve them in Backup & Restore before transfers begin. Eligible preferences are transferred by the browser's account service; Aar318 does not receive them. This is not cross-browser-vendor synchronization or guaranteed backup retention after uninstall. File exports remain available without an account. Synced snapshots are compressed, not independently encrypted by the extension; do not put secrets in preference fields. Oversized preferences remain local with a visible error. Imports validate the extension and schema, merge included preferences, save a local safety copy, and disable sync until re-enabled. Existing tabs may need a reload. Credentials, saved login sessions, document/chat content, transient state, and notification-delivery history are excluded. Saved lists and other content excluded by the backup page continue to use the extension's existing export tools. Disabling sync preserves local settings; deletion of the synced copy is a separate confirmed action. Other enabled devices can republish a deleted copy. **Alarms:** Schedules delayed preference synchronization without keeping background code running continuously. **Storage:** Retains local preferences, sync state, a local safety copy, and the browser-account preference snapshot. No cloud-provider login, new cloud host access, or remote executable code is used. - **Active Tab:** Identifies the page where the user invokes a toolbar command so missing access can be requested for the dashboard across ordinary websites. - **Alarms:** Schedules recurring background live-status, optional upload, and optional Shorts checks. - **Storage:** Saves tracked channels, favorites, notification state, exclusions, appearance preferences, session data, backups, and private local insights. - **Notifications:** Displays system alerts when tracked channels go live or an opted-in channel publishes a new video or Short. - **Context Menus:** Adds extension-icon shortcuts for panel access, checks, notification sleep, and current-channel management. - **Scripting:** Restores the packaged dashboard on an already-open permitted page when its controls are missing after installation, an update, or a site-access grant. No remote code is loaded. - **Tabs:** Identifies the current YouTube channel and keeps extension-menu state synchronized with YouTube navigation. - **Host Permissions:** Reads public YouTube channel, live, video, and Shorts pages for status checks and supports the optional user-controlled floating overlay or pinned-action dashboard on browser pages. - **Privacy:** Tracked channels, settings, backups, sessions, and insights remain in local browser storage. No analytics, advertising tracking, connected YouTube account, OAuth flow, or developer API key is used. [Privacy policy](https://gist.github.com/aar318/9d4fc167a12546f162bcef3b91322aad). **ℹ️ Notes** - Brief offline results do not immediately rearm live alerts. Two successful offline observations spanning at least two minutes and a ten-minute same-broadcast alert cooldown reduce repeats. A different identified live video may alert immediately. - Public live, upload, and Shorts detection depends on YouTube's public page data and may require maintenance if YouTube changes its markup. - Audio/video previews are user-started and remain subject to browser autoplay rules and each creator's embedding settings. - Channels that block embedding can still be opened directly on their YouTube live page.