YouTube’s grand and all, but there’s definitely a few things that could be improved about it. Until Google decides to implement automatic playback, or the ability to resize videos while watching them, we’ll have to turn to outside sources. Notably…Chrome extensions.

Here’s 5 extensions for Google Chrome designed to make your browsing experience better.

YouTube Feed 

Want to keep an eye on YouTube without having to visit the site? YouTube feed is the extension for you. Every time a new video is uploaded by a friend, commented on by a friend, or uploaded to a channel you’re subscribing to, YouTube feed will notify you. A small, red number appears under the icon, telling you how many new videos there are for you to look at.  Clicking on the icon will display the new videos as a list on the right hand side of your browser.

Auto Replay

This one is a godsend for me and it’s fairly self-explanatory what the extension does. It adds a button to YouTube videos that toggles automatic replay on and off. When toggled on, the videos will repeat until the feature’s toggled off again. Pretty awesome, no?

Auto HD 

One irritating thing a few people have noticed about YouTube is that if you try to watch a video that’s available in HD…it doesn’t automatically start in HD. Instead, it immediately starts playing in the lowest resolution format available, and you have to reload it at a higher resolution.

Auto HD automatically sets each video you watch to the highest resolution available. More a matter of convenience than anything.

SmartVideo

This is probably the most complicated extension on the list. In a sense, it’s an amalgamation of all the other items here, as well.

You can change when videos start playing (when they load, when you click ‘play,’ when buffering is complete, or when the application feels is a good time to start the video based on connection speed/buffering percentage), loop videos, set a default video quality or size based on your system’s network connection and performance, and choose whether or not to switch to HD on full screen. What’s more, it also calculates how much time you’ve got left before a video’s finished buffering and contains separate preferences based on whether a video’s embedded, on the site, or part of a playlist.

Bit of a mouthful, no? Still, it’s definitely an extension that’s worth looking into.

YouTube Options

If you’re looking to customize your YouTube experience, YouTube Options is a good place to start. With this extension, you can set the desired resolution of YouTube videos (YouTube doesn’t really let you change the resolution), and remove everything except for the video from the page on an element-by-element basis, including comments, suggested videos, footers, playlists, and video branding.

A great tool if you’re sick of YouTube suggesting “My Humps” is related to ACDC, or listening to fanboys howl about how Lord of The Rings ripped off World of Warcraft.

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