civilblur/youlag v4.2.0

v.4.2.0

on GitHub

More customization and quality of life improvements added. Head to the Youlag extension settings to explore them.

The extension has also undergone a major refactoring and improved state handling, to provide a more robust and reliable experience. The refactoring also allowed for a more maintainable project structure, improving clarity for potential future contributors.

Highlights

• Show suggested videos based on your Watch later, or Subscriptions, or the current author [1].
• Video chapters support for timestamp navigation, skip previous/next, and optional chapter progress indicator [2].
• Video grid view for mobile, a compact view to browse videos[3].
• Sort Watch later by the order when they were marked as such [4].
• Experimental features:
  • Replace clickbait thumbnails and title to less sensational ones, via DeArrow [5].
    • Special thanks to @ajayyy for approving the use of the public API integration.
  • Display video length on top of thumbnails, if available from DeArrow [6].
  • Filter feed entries by category in "Watch later" (Favorites) page [7].
• Periodically check for new Youlag updates; displays a notification if available [8].
• General stability improvements, local caching for faster loading, and major refactoring.

Improvements

• [1] Show suggested videos/articles while in video mode, based on entries from your "Watch later" (Favorites), or Subscriptions, or the from the current author you're viewing.
  • Youlag settings → Watch more suggestions
  • It is especially handy if you have stored lots of "Watch later", as the suggested videos will be content you're interested in, allowing you to curate your own "recommendations".
  • This feature is enabled by default, can be disabled in the settings.
• [2] Video chapters support for timestamp navigation, skip previous/next, and optional chapter progress indicator.
  • Youlag settings → Video chapters
  • Chapters are automatically displayed for videos that provide timestamps in the video description.
  • This feature is only supported when using YouTube as playback source, opposed to Invidious.
• [3] Mobile: grid layout setting for video mode, a more compact view to allowing more videos to display at once.
  • Youlag settings → Feed view
  • This setting is disabled by default, enable it in the settings.
• Mobile: Collapse video description in mobile view.
  • This allows for the video suggestions to be easily accessed without having to scroll past the entire video description.
  • Tap the video description to expand it.
• [4] Sort "Watch later" (Favorites) by recently modified.
  • Ordered by when you added them to "Watch later", or when they were marked as read, opposed to by the date you received them.
  • Youlag settings → Sorting
  • This setting is disabled by default, enable it in the settings.
• Auto-select the category when adding a new feed, based on the category that you arrived from.
  • If you're on e.g. category "Music" and you press the "+" button to add a new feed, the dropdown to select category will be pre-fill with "Music", instead of the default "Uncategorized".
• In video mode, display website name instead of author in the cards.
• Added shortcut button to "Manage channel (feed)" in the toolbar, to edit the current feed.
  • The button will only appear when viewing a filtered feed, opposed to e.g. a category or playlist.
• Use relative dates in video mode cards.
  • E.g. "2 days ago" instead of an absolute date "January 01, 2026".
• [8] Youlag update notification options.
  • An update notification will appears on the feed page when available.
    • Enabled by default, you can disable this update check in Youlag's settings page.
    • This implementation looks for updates via Github (Microsoft) every 2 weeks.
  • An update indicator will appear in the extensions page when Youlag has a new update.
    • This feature is only available if you enabled the FreshRSS setting: Settings → Privacy → Retrieve extension list.
• Video mode category settings now lists them based on user priority, opposed to the default order (created date).
• Minor visual improvements.
• Major refactoring to provide better maintainability and make it easier for potential contributors.

Experimental features

• [5] Replace clickbait thumbnails and title to less sensational ones.
  • Youlag settings → Feed view
  • Uses DeArrow's crowd-sourced options when available.
    • The DeArrow data are cached locally in IndexDB to avoid needing to call DeArrow excessively.
  • If unavailable, thumbnail fallback to YouTube's low-resolution screencap, then the original clickbait thumbnail.
    • Livestream videos tend to fallback to the original thumbnail.
  • Title will prioritize DeArrow's titles, and fallback to the original clickbait title if none are provided.
  • Before:
  • After:
• [6] Display video length on top of thumbnails.
  • This relies on DeArrow's API, which uses community-sourced data. As such, the video length is only available for certain videos (typically the popular creators).
• [7] Filter feed entries by category in "Watch later" (Favorites) page.
  • Youlag settings → Feed view
  • This feature is disabled by default.
  • Display only feed entries matching the selected category filters.
  • Handy for those who have already categorized their feeds, allowing for easier browsing according to your current mood.
  • Note: The current implementation is only a stopgap, a temporary solution.
    • Currently, it simply hides feed entries that don't match the selected category filters, and doesn't specifically fetch feed entries based on the filters.
    • You may have to load new feed entries several times until the page gets populated with entries matching your filters.
    • It is not yet optimized for being performant, but should not be an issue unless you load an immense amount of entries on the page.

Fixes

• Mobile: Address unresponsive taps on video modal buttons after restoring an inactive tab.
• Improved reliability for "Swipe down in video mode to activate mini player", where it could stop registering swipes previously.
• Articles viewed in video mode could end up showing a grey box where images should normally appear due to lazyloading.
• When enabling "Use video platform labels" in the Youlag settings, the labels on the settings page will now be updated immediately after saving.
  • Previously, it required you to enter a feed page for it to take effect.
• The FreshRSS logo in the search result page was unstyled.
• Allow accessing the settings button even when Youlag is in its blocking/loading state.
• Page scroll got locked when navigating back to close slider (FreshRSS/FreshRSS/issues/8488)

Documentation

• In conjunction with the major refactoring, each JavaScript file /src/*.js provides a basic description and sections that outline its role and usage.