Optube

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.

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.

Profiles
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.

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.

v1.3
Content filters - filter by duration, whitelist or block specific channels, block certain keywords (doesn't include keywords in descriptions). These filters will hide videos from your desired preference.

QOL - Open YouTube button, slight style change in some areas for better contrast.

v1.4
Bug fixes
- Fixed cinema profile (now uses thumbnail instead of preview due to YouTube server responses)

- Fixed page flashes when filtering via duration in the 'content filters' panel.

v1.5
Bug fixes
- Adjusted the layout of the cinema profile and now supports ultrawide monitors
- Fixed the 'create button' toggle on the top bar under 'layout' so it now succesfully toggles hidden or visible.

- Added 'Buy me coffee' link if you would like to support me as a developer.
Disclaimer: All features are free - no paywalls. Contributions are voluntary and go
directly to the developer, not processed by Google.

Contributions are very much appreciated if you would like to show me support but isn't required :)