DeArrow extension for YouTube that makes thumbnails bearable

Man this creator keeps on giving, making YouTube better than Google does so
- It's pretty telling a platform like YouTube really only gets fully enjoyable with an adblocker, sponsorblock and this. I wish PeerTube had a lot of good creators, but last time I checked (years ago, admittedly) it was mostly conspiracy theorists and cryptobros.
  
  The problem with PeerTube is that there's no built-in way for creators to get paid. If there are no ads or sponsors, then the only alternative is some kind of value for value system like what Podcasting 2.0 has. Until some kind of well integrated funding system gets built for PeerTube, creators really are not going to be incentivized to publish stuff on the platform.
  
  https://tilvids.com has some reasonable ones, although they're often just as well YouTubers, so you get similar clickbait, unfortunately.
  
  Tilvids.com is probably the best place for good creators on PeerTube.
  
  Don’t forget the PocketTube extension, which allows you to sort subscriptions into self-made categories. Which is shockingly not a default feature.
- I mean yes but also it's not that hard. Google is not trying to give you a great experience, they're trying to drive clicks to ads.

I did the opposite. I installed an addon that adds Mr Beast to every thumbnail.
- I need a mod for my phone my that just makes every icon a picture of some character with their mouth wide open, yelling.
  (refer to this reddit post for what I mean)
  Calculator? Someone yelling.
  Settings? Someone yelling.
  Camera app? Believe it or not, someone yelling.
- i tried that too, its one of my favourite extensions
- There’s also a Scott the Woz version, which I have installed
- Lmao

I've used it for exactly three minutes and this is already amazing. I hope it gets integrated into ReVanced and Newpipe.
- I would love it on Piped, they already have sponsorblock
  
  Never heard of piped. Filling the same niche as revanced?
- Thanks, I didn't know revanced was a thing. I only enjoyed old vanced for briefly in its last days. So good to hear theres still options like this around.

Really good extension, I've added it to my browser.
While some creators like Linus have said they dislike the clickbaity titles and thumbnails but they have to do it due to engagement that's simply because the younger generations are the ones engaging with that content. As an older person I'd rather just have a to the point description of what I'm going to get.
- I might get it for the titles alone. The clickbaity thumbnails don't really bother me, but I'd like to have a good title at least.
  
  Yeah the titles are actually a huge draw for me.
  
  I'm going to set the fallback thumbnail to the original instead of a random thumbnail. The randomly generated thumbnails are too out of context to be useful.
- I don’t think it can be said to conclusively be an age issue. I assure you that many Boomers and older Xers love clickbait titles.
  It’s a more granular demographic than just age.
  
  It's definitely an intelligent based issue, not necessarily age.
  
  Maybe but I can only go with my own anecdotal experience and It tends to be the younger audience more attracted to them.
  Of course, I fully admit I may be completely wrong.
- There is a reason clickbait images and titles are used, they work. If they didn't work, no one would use them.
  
  You must think marketing is made of infallible geniuses. Just because it exists doesn't make it good.
- Don't forget that creators will release a video that you might want to watch later and then change the information.
  You'll see a video you want to check tomorrow but not enough to add it to the "watch later". But when you check your subscriptions the next day it's been 12+ hours and they've changed the title and thumbnail to further game the algorithm.

But I don't want to reward people that do this by watching their videos
- I second this. The only reason click bait trash thumbnails work is people accepting it.
  
  KIDS. accept it, that's all who has all this time to watch these dumbed down videos , and what are they attracted to? Apparently gaping mouths.
- Too late for that

Also be sure to get the restore YouTube dislike button extension
- As well as uBlock Origin, Sponsorblock and BlockTube.
  
  I believe YouTube is going to start detecting ad blockers, and there will be an arms race
  
  Sadly I can't find Sponsorblock and BlockTube in the Firefox addon store (Android).
  
  I'm curious to know what's your usecase for BlockTube

Love the idea, but just to be the devil's advocate, I think it will just mask garbage videos. Currently, the clickbait thumbnails and titles are an indicator to blacklist a channel, without having to waste time watching it.
- Unfortunately because of the way Youtube's algorithm works, even high quality channels are buried if they don't play the game.
  
  Yeah, even good ones do it.
- If you look at the DeArrow website and browser extension pages, I made sure to only use high quality channels as examples (Tom Scott, CGP Grey) to demonstrate how far reaching the sensationalism problem is.
  
  Tom Scott's thumbnails aren't that bad IMO, they're pretty minimal in comparison to some other channels.
  
  CGP Grey is personally painful to me. He used to be a no-nonsense education youtube legend, but in the last few years he's just maximised clickability - even going thorugh his whole back catalogue and changing titles and thumbnails.
  For example, he made a great video about generative adversarial networks ~5 years ago but now its titled "How machines like ChatGPT learn" - despite coming out before GPT.
- The Real Engineering video used as an example here is excellent.

This add-on needs to:
Store unlimited amount of client-side data
Access your data for sites in the googlevideo.com domain
Access your data for sites in the youtube.com domain
Access your data for sponsor.ajay.app
Access your data for dearrow-thumb.ajay.app
Access your data for www.youtube-nocookie.com
This add-on may also ask to: **Access your data for all websites
Is there a better option than for it to need unlimited amount of client-side data? Also, why "Access your data for all websites"?-
- Creator of theq extension here, that is an optional permissions (may ask). It never asks to access to all sites, it only optionally let's you add support for additional sites such as different Invidious instances. These are arbitrary domains, so it needs permission to ask for any arbitrary website.
  Support for invidious is not actually done yet, so right now, it never asks for permission for any new sites anyway
  The client side data is used to store your submissions to always show your preferred title, even if there is another submission on the server. You can disable this option in the settings
  
  Thanks for your informative reply.
  
  Bro, I seriously would marry you and make you food every day
  
  Thank you for your work !
- Access your data for all websites
  It's required to access iframes.
- Without having investigated the plug in itself, going by just what you posted: That's not likely to be a nefarious request, the plug-in needs to store data on your computer. Dealing with large number of titles it makes sense that it would cache things on your computer to minimise overtaxing their servers, to serve you more or less the same data over and over.
- Maybe it's for embedded videos? idk

Google's algorithm has forced people into using click bait thumbnails and titles. If they don't attract more views and subscribers, then their channels are not pushed.
- I think a bigger problem is they demonetize and depromote any video discussing a controversial or kid-unfriendly topic. This affects the actual content.
  Also, don't forget to subscribe, hit that like button, smash that bell, and leave a comment letting me know what you think!
- Are you implying that content creators don't themselves want more views and subscribers? Of course they do!
  "They only use thumbnails and titles that get views and subscribers because if they don't... they won't get views and subscribers since Google isn't pushing their content."
  That's what it sounds like you're saying.
  
  I think the point is that you can't get more views by being genuine and honest, as the algorithm awards griftiness
  
  The point is that channel growth, clicks and interactions as a metric is used more for suggesting videos than relevancy and the likelihood that someone will watch a video to the end.
  This creates a click bait arms race between creators.
  
  isn't the whole point of running a YouTube channel to get views and subscribers?
  
  It's real easy to solve this problem by just not pushing videos with text, arrows, symbols or reaction soyfaces in thumbnails. The issue is that they push all of that to the top and push everything else to the bottom.
- The only way to win the game, is to not play in the first place unfortunately

There is also an extension that adds Mr Beast to every thumbnail
- Yooo, can I have a source for this? Just for research purposes
  
  https://mrbeastify.github.io/

I kind of like seeing the clickbait, it lets me know which videos/channels arent worth my time. I know most use at least a little clickbait these days, but from the better channels its usually managable and still on topic (like the Real Engineering example shown here, whereas the others are complete clickbait that I would avoid).

.
- If a channel that makes clickbait garbage thumbnails pops up I just click to not have the channel recommended again, and that has worked pretty well.
  Clickbait works and I encourage all YouTubers that I watch to do so. The more people they reach, the more money they earn and the better their content can become. Outside of a minor annoyance to the superusers, using clickbait titles and thumbnails is just good business. Even the very best content producers in their category (Veritasium in educational content, MKBHD for tech reviewing are great examples) use it because they have to: but lots of them dislike doing it. Veritasium has two great videos about it: clickbaiting is a HUGE benefit to any YouTube channel, a good thumbnail alone can account for 20-50% of all views on a video.
  Imagine it like this: every time you pay for anything, you get a free 30% discount if you pinch yourself in the arm. Wouldn't you always just do it? Who cares about the minor annoyance.
  That's what it's like for the content creator. Put 30 minutes of work into a clickbait thumbnail + title and it's 30% more views on every single video.
  
  I understand but I don't have to like it or see it on my stream. I'm sure they won't miss the fraction of missed views from people like me if they're making 30% more from others.
  
  Thumbnail and first 5-10 seconds for auto play or preview play or whatever it's called is super important. I post some videos just for fun and can see the boost when I take effort in those two things.

I never thought it could be possible to do that, thank you so much for this and making YouTube a better place.
If someone knows how to get rid of shorts in the search results I'd be most grateful 👌
- There is an add on, and it works well! Firefox add-on
  
  Thank you so much, I can't wait to try this and get rid of those!
- Replying to find this comment again later.

I don't mind the clickbait as much because I've learned to filter the crap out to some degree (following F1 channels does that to a mf), but still, anything to keep the bullshit to a minimum.
This should be a part of newpipe.
- The majority of videos I that pop up on my home feed don’t have clickbait thumbnails. A few admittedly do, but they are usually way toned down and when mixed among other videos in my feed not as vacuous when it’s just a few of them.
  I think the issue can be largely self correcting on the user side if people just take a little bit of effort to curate good content for themselves.
  
  Unfortunately, terrible thumbnails and titles are just a part of the culture in some circles, even if the channels themselves make good content. Look at this trash, and these are actually the better ones:

Can newpipe implement this please

We need this on Revanced too. Also on NewpipeXSponserblock.
- Oh lord yes, I was scrolling through the replies in the hope of finding a ReVanced reference.
  
  Glad that I fulfiled your satisfaction

I installed this app and looked up some Mr. Beast vids as a test. If anything, it made more tempted to check out his vids just because I don't have to see his annoying giant soyface in every thumbnail now.
- lmao, who unironically says soyface?
  
  If you've got another way to describe that facial expression Mr. Beast does in all his thumbnails, then I'm all ears.

Tbf I can't think of any instance where Marques has click baited. At most they're just obnoxious. But it's been proven to work, as dumb as it is. Also Marques's thumbnails are nowhere near as cringe as other Youtubers.
While I wish the days of 2007-2013 YouTube returned to the non clickbait and non garbage thumbnails, those days are over. I'd rather have the obnoxious thumbnails so I know which creators are trash.
- I don't know who this person is, but the example in the OP is definitely clickbait. "This phone is nearly perfect" but doesn't say what the phone is, baiting you to click for the answer instead of just mentioning what phone we're reviewing.
  No judgement, it's his business and he's gotta make money, but saying he doesn't do this just seems demonstrably wrong.
  
  Yeah exactly, these kinds of titles make me not wanna click at all because I got no idea what it's about (since it's almost certainly not gonna be the perfect phone), so usually I don't watch this kind of content at all. DeArrow really helped navigate around this crap and even LTT is kinda interesting to watch again because I finally know if a video is gonna be interesting to me BEFORE clicking it.
- Tbf I can’t think of any instance where Marques has click baited.
  Titles picked within the last 4 months:
  This Phone is Nearly Perfect!
  How Does Sony Keep Doing This?
  I Tried a Secret Google Project!
  What is Happening with Samsung's Camera?
  iPad Killer or Clone?
  Apple's Forbidden Words
  This is the Dumbest Product I've Ever Reviewed
  This Smartphone Hardware is Getting Crazy!
  This is what parasocial relationships do to you...

Yeah but that reading rainbow thumbnail is fire
- You read it wrong.
- Yeah, let's burn it.

Basically an Adblocker for your brain... nice!

If you label your videos as click bait trash, I'll treat it like click bait trash and not watch it.
I'm not going to install software to correct and support your shit behavior.

You can assume how good the inside content would be from a specific video by looking at its title and thumbnail. I'd rather not using it.
- on the extreme levels, yes, but almost everyone on the platform does some form of deception to convince you to click.
  Like it says on the dearrow website:
  "Clickbait" isn't the exception anymore, it's becoming the norm. Many have even started going through their entire backlog, changing old titles and thumbnails to be more attention grabbing and vague.
  It's no one's fault. It's a system that creates a race to the bottom.
  
  It's absolutely the fault of YouTube for pushing this sort of interface, and the fault of viewers who click on garbage thumbnails
- You can ascertain how much effort the creator was willing to put in the thumbnail but that’s really it. All YouTube thumbnails are basically just try to trick monkey brains into clicking. I can’t stand clickbait thumbnails so this would be really nice in my opinion

Man, I wish this is available for my TV..
- Here's hoping this gets added to SmartTube like SponsorBlock was.

I just use the tried and true method of unsubscribing and watching another channel
- “Don’t recommend this channel” has been a life saver
- You'll run out of channels fast, trying to do that.
  
  You'd think, but honestly I've still found a helluva large amount of good channels that don't do this.
- The sad thing is that even good channel are driven to do this bullshit because people do really watch those more often. How can we be such a brainless hive mind...
  E.g. Marques Brownlee actually does do decent reviews.
  
  had me until the last line
  marques only does impressions and doesn't do reviews
  the only review he has done is the iPhone 13 pro 6 months later
  every other video is made with 2-3 weeks of usage(he gets device a few weeks before launch and uses beta version of software to make "reviews")

I've used clickbait remover addon for more than a year now. I vastly prefer just a random screenshot as a thumbnail than those custom ones.
- Clickbait remover uses YouTube's auto generated ones, which while are seemingly random, are not. They use some algorithm to target faces in exaggerated expressions.
  DeArrwow uses actually random ones (and then a user can submit specific timestamps if there is a better one). It's noticeable better on many channels imo
  (I made DeArrow)
  
  you are the goat. thanks for making these banger extensions for youtube
  
  which while are seemingly random, are not
  Interesting! I've suspected this before but nice to get a confirmation. Some thumbnails have seemed a bit too conveinient to be randomly selected
- Yeah, especially for some creators like veritasium where they play "musical thumbnails" and change it every few days for about a week or so. It's so annoying because I keep thinking it's a different video.

this is brilliant!! thank you so much for creating this and also for giving us sponsorblock. you're the goat!!

Nice way to remove clickbait, but now my home page looks like 2014
- bliss
- The extension allows you to keep the original thumbnail or a random frame from the video is a community-submitted thumbnail is unavailable.

I want to know when YT made it possible to have thumbnails be their own image and not taken from the video itself. I can scrub the video through every single frame and never actually find the thumbnails anymore.
Hell, sometimes the text in the thumbnail says something that isn't even discussed in the video at all. Those are the ones I hate the most. And I wouldn't necessarily want to remove the thumbnail, just because there are plenty of channels that make the thumbnail the actual title and the title is just... Bullshit, non-descriptive, a number, etc. Not all of them are bad. Civvie 11 and Internet Comment Etiquette do this. Erik probably does it on purpose both for the fact it works and also because he is a satire channel that regularly shits on these practices by showing how dumb they are. Civvie also satirizes YT's bullshit, but that's not really the prime focus of the channel.
- .
- For specific types of video where they are mostly similar looking (For example, online TCGs and such), it can be hard to get a thumbnail you want that looks different than other videos of the same type, so people were adding long segment with the static image of thumbnail they wanted at the end of the video for a workaround, until Google finally relented and just let people use the thumbnails they want.
  I don't have a problem with this, I just try not to watch videos with clickbait thumbnails and/or titles, because if they think they "had" to do that, then their content usually isn't very good to begin with.
- I think it's really telling when creators have different thumbnails on Nebula vs YouTube. It could even be interpreted as a scream for help "this is the thumbnail I wanted but this is the thumbnail that puts food on my table"
- True, but even if YouTube forced you take a screenshot from the video people would add the image in the last frame similar to what they sometimes do for YT shorts.
- I suppose to drive engagement with fake thumbnails, the same thing they do when they put irrelevant things into your search results (thankfully that one is easily blocked by a uBlock filter).

But then how do I filter out clickbaity videos?
- This...if they want to make their thumbnail as pathetic as possible, let them. It's much easier to spot the junk this way.

For people wondering, the extension is also capable of changing clickbait title into a more descriptive one. You could also have a button toggle on each video to see the original title and thumbnail vs the changed one
- Agreed. I like the title change, but the chance of not being able to remember the actual title of a video when I need to is not worth it.
  
  What does remembering the actual title mean if they change it every five minutes ;)
  But yea, a DeArrow search engine would solve that problem

Getting rid of "thumbnail face" is reason enough to use this add-on. Thanks for the recommendation!

Thing is, I know I won't click the ones on the left. The ones on the right actually look interesting.
... Which means I'll be promoting writing clickbaity titles by clicking on the videos and I'm not sure how I feel about that

Great idea! You can't really get away from the clickbait thumbnails. As others said even good channels are heavily incentivised to do it.
It is already really difficult to find the stuff that is actually worth watching on YouTube. If you boycotted all clickbait thumbnails you would miss out on some otherwise great creators.
I'd much rather take clickbait thumbnails and baked in ads though as I can get around them with extensions and there is still a worthwhile video behind them.
When creators start doing low effort content like reaction videos, unboxings/product first impressions, or product "showcases" (ads) is when I usually know a channel has outlived its usefulness and stop watching altogether.

Thank you for the link. It works great! Now I have the perfect YouTube with Ublock Origin + Sponsor Block + Dearrow + Return Youtube Dislike. It's crazy how many extensions you need to add to make YouTube bearable.... it's really time for a good competitor to take its place !
- And add a Youtube shorts block while you're at it.
- A different platform would also be plagued by clickbait and sponsor messages.
- Don't forget Enhancer for YouTube; it's an absolute essential in my book.

i would use this but some of the channels i watch the most number their thumbnails and dont do clickbait like this. if i could pick and choose per channel somehow it would be more helpful to me. i do agree with the sentiment though!
- there's a whitelist!
- You can do different settings per channel. So, you can allowlist channels, or even do the reverse, and only change titles/thumbnails on channels you don't like.
- Same. The channels I really enjoy create their own non-clickbait emails. They also tend to "standardize" their video titles so they all follow a similar format. I wish there was a way to whitelist certain channels.
  
  There is

Can't wait to have this on YouTube ReVanced and SmartTube.
- Why though..it only is going to make garbage crap videos look ok and you'll be just consuming more trash.
  
  Not everything is completely crap
- It's on revanced now

Awesome idea and the feedback suggests it works well, too. Any plans to support Firefox on Android?

The real engineering original is basically spot on.
- Removed the clickbaity thumbnail though!
  
  I don't really see how it's click baity. Click bait implies that it's lying or exaggerating something, and that thumbnail is basically spot on. You click that link and you get exactly what you expected.

I have dearrow and I like it. I also installed Unhook, which "hides YouTube related videos, comments, shorts tab, suggestions wall, homepage recommendations, trending, and other distractions".

But now you don't know if it's click baity or not and will click it to watch.

Can vouch this extension is amazing. I started using it when it had 200 chrome downloads and it was already had many prominent creators in its database.
Title and thumbnail replacements are based on community votes, just like sponsorblock.

Is this available as a vanced patch aswell?
- Not yet, but hoping it is in the future. Also did just check because Sponsorblock from the same dev is available.
  
  Cool, sponsor block must've saved hours of my life by now.

I went to install it but realised it's already among the 30 or so extensions I have to make the web bearable. Does that happen to anyone else?
- You should compile a list

Wo a new extension worthy of installation, the last time that happened was a years ago, Channel Blocker. Feels like an ongoing battle with yt, to make it viewable to a human rather than it's own bots.
- Or rather, the trained dopamine minorit monkey that it tries to turn you into

This is awesome, installing it right now.

Crowdsourced?
Would be nice to get a random frame of the video instead of the actual thumbnail..
- Thats what this does if theres no crowdsourced thumbnail available. It just picks a random frame from the video.
- That's what it does if there's no crowdsourced thumbnail.

This sounds like a nice addon, sadly most of my YT consumption is done from my Nvidia Shield TV with STN, so I still get those annoying thumbnails I think (I have them in my home screen and that's where I watch them or add them to the list to watch later within the Shield menu).

I just thought about giving it a try then remembered that 99.9% of my time on YT is through the Android app (ReVanced to be precise) and TV (YT AdFree on LG TV)
- I'd expect the ReVanced team to add this as a patch soon, seems very cool
  
  Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if they did
- I use ReVanced and wasn't aware of AdFree, thanks! I try and use Odysee wherever I can, but to be honest, my favorite stuff is still on YouTube.
- You can use Firefox for Android with plugins
  
  Nah it is not worth it for me, the app UX/UI and functionality is miles ahead of the mobile site

Need this on SmartTube for AndroidTV
- It does have it. You can choose at which part of every video to take the thumbnail from. Just might take a while to find it in the settings.
  
  Yes I have it turned on. I was interested about the title generation

I use this extension, clickbait remover for youtube. Does it's job perfectly well!
- Clickbait remover uses YouTube’s auto generated ones, which while are seemingly random, are not. They use some algorithm to target faces in exaggerated expressions.
  DeArrow uses actually random ones (and then a user can submit specific timestamps if there is a better one). It’s noticeable better on many channels imo
  (I made DeArrow)
  
  I really like your idea. What do you think about showing 4 random thumbnails in split-screen to give a better impression of the content?
  
  Wait, the default thumbnails are no longer just chosen from three points in the video based on percentage? Now they use algorithms to generate a suitable thumbnail too?
  
  Oh thanks for the heads-up! I'll check out DeArrow then!

But this will make me stop clicking on 6 different videos before I find one I like... Where's the fun in that?

Brilliant

On firefox youtube videos take a long time to load, they'll play for a bit and then buffer. Without this extension youtube works fine on chrome. I guess this extension is in beta stage, needs to be polished more.
Considering it's from the same person behind sponsorblock, I'm positive future updates will fix this issue..
Edit: Seems I was using old version, just updated the extension as developer said they'd fixed the above issue in new version. So far so good, now videos are playing fine on firefox..