Optube

Focus your YouTube experience. Block distracting elements and enhance productivity.

Make YouTube distraction‑free Tired of getting pulled into Shorts, endless recommendations, or a noisy sidebar when you just wanted to watch one video? Optube helps you focus by letting you hide the parts of YouTube that doesn't serve you. Now introducing profiles as part of v1.2! No account needed, and you can switch things on & off anytime. What you can hide: With over 60 toggles, here is a small list of some of the things you can toggle: • Shorts across YouTube • Comments and commenter avatars • Recommended “Up next” panels • Home and Subscriptions feeds (or just parts, like the sidebar subscription list) • Sidebar sections like Explore, History, Playlists, and more • Badges, chips, watched progress bars, and hover previews • Top bar clutter: Search, Notifications, Create button, etc. • AI summary, category/topic rows, and community posts And much more... Why it helps: • Cut distractions • Keep your homepage clean • Watch and navigate with less noise • Customise YouTube to match how you use it (study, music, tutorials, etc.) How it works: • Simple toggles in the extension popup to turn features on/off instantly • Changes are visual only (it doesn't delete your data or affect your account) • Works across all pages • No tracking, no sign‑up, just works out of the box. • Settings are stored with Chrome Sync so they follow through to your other desktop environments should you have more than one PC/Laptop. Bonus: Profiles (Just added in v1.2) With over 60 filters, it now makes sense to bring the addition of preconfigured profiles to remove some friction in choosing a set of toggles that suits you. You can now choose between cinematic, focus, minimal, compact and zen. Get started • Install Optube • Open YouTube • Click the Optube icon and choose what to hide, changes apply immediately. Note Optube isn’t an ad blocker and doesn’t remove creators’ content; it hides on‑page UI elements you choose. This extension WILL still work if you already use another extension or chromium browser like Brave that uses ad blocker. CHANGELOG v1.1 - Toggle YouTube playables (games grid) - Toggle subscriber count on channel pages/videos - Toggle top bar avatar - Toggle comment replies - Toggle live videos / live chat - Toggle actions on videos (like, dislike, share, save, etc.) - Toggle Filter chips on videos - Toggle upload date on comments v1.2 This version now offers profiles, with a slight polish and redesign to the extensions UI. Profiles: - Cinema: This was already here in the initial release, but has moved into profiles. Cinematic mode provides a cinematic experience by changing the home feed into a cinematic style layout, such as adding a auto rotating video spotlight, and a carousel of videos. - Focus: Hides Shorts, posts, comments, and notification noise so you can research or study without distractions. - Minimal: Strips navigation and account surfaces to create a blank, content only experience. - Compact: Condenses metadata and preview overlays for a tighter browsing surface that surfaces only the essentials. Eliminates social features, live surfaces, and hover previews so YouTube becomes an ambient background feed.