youZen Docs

One sidepanel and a small pile of switches. Here's what each one does, what it changes on the page, and what happens when you flip it. Nothing is remote-configurable — what's documented is what runs in your browser.

Quick start

youZen is a Chrome extension that quiets YouTube. Install it, open the side panel, and start flipping switches.

Install

  1. Add youZen from the Chrome Web Store.
  2. Pin it to your toolbar so the icon stays visible.
  3. Click the leaf icon to open the side panel.
  4. Defaults are sensible — flip what you want.

Where things live

  • Feeds tab — homepage, search, sidebar, navigation chrome.
  • Watch tab — comments, related, action buttons, description.
  • Blocklist tab — keyword and channel rules.
  • Header — global pause and theme.

Feeds

Everything you see before you click a video — homepage, sidebar, search, and the navigation chrome.

Hide Shorts across YouTube master

One master toggle that flips every Shorts surface at once, plus per-surface toggles if you want to keep one and kill the rest.

  • Homepage Shorts shelves

    hideHomeShorts CSS Default: On

    Removes the dedicated Shorts shelves on the homepage feed (the rows with vertical thumbnails). Regular videos around them stay where they are; the feed just reflows.

  • Left sidebar nav

    hideNavShorts CSS Default: On

    Hides the Shorts entry in the left sidebar nav so you cannot accidentally click into the Shorts surface from there.

  • Channel Shorts tab

    hideChannelShortsTab CSS Default: On

    On a creator's channel page, the row of tabs (Home / Videos / Shorts / Live / Playlists / Community) loses its Shorts entry.

  • Search results

    hideSearchShorts CSS Default: On

    Search results stop showing Shorts shelves and individual Shorts cards. You see videos, channels, and playlists only.

  • Subscriptions feed

    hideSubsShorts CSS Default: On

    Strips Shorts from your Subscriptions feed so it stays a chronological list of long-form uploads from the channels you actually follow.

Declutter homepage master

The homepage feed is the loudest surface on YouTube. Pick what shows there — or replace it entirely.

  • Hide homepage feed

    hideHomeFeed Hybrid Default: Off

    Hides the main grid of thumbnails on youtube.com. When enabled, you choose what shows in its place via the dropdown next to the toggle:

    • Empty

      Just whitespace where the feed used to be. The cleanest option — useful if you only ever come to YouTube via direct links.

    • Quick links card

      A small card with one-tap entries for Subscriptions, History, Playlists, and Watch Later. Default option.

    • Redirect to Subscriptions

      Whenever you load the homepage, the extension immediately navigates to /feed/subscriptions so you skip the algorithmic feed entirely.

  • Chip / category bar

    hideChipBar CSS Default: Off

    Hides the row of pill-shaped chips at the top of the homepage (All, Music, Gaming, News, Live, …). They are a category re-ranker, not a real navigation control.

  • Breaking news & featured shelves

    hideBreakingShelves CSS Default: Off

    Removes the Breaking News and similar editorial shelves that occasionally appear at the top of the feed.

Navigation chrome

Standalone toggles for the global YouTube UI elements that follow you across every page.

  • Hide left sidebar entirely

    hideLeftSidebar CSS Default: Off

    Hides the entire left navigation rail. Aggressive — only enable this if you reach playlists, history, and subscriptions through bookmarks or the homepage replacement.

  • Hide notification bell

    hideNotificationBell CSS Default: Off

    Removes the bell icon in the YouTube masthead. The bell is a standing invitation to interrupt yourself; this turns it off without unsubscribing from notifications.

  • Hide trending / explore

    hideTrending CSS Default: Off

    Hides the Trending and Explore entries in the left sidebar so you cannot fall into a curated rabbit hole.

  • Hide "Create" button in navbar

    hideCreateButton CSS Default: On

    Removes the top-bar Create / upload button. If you do not run a channel, the button is just visual noise.

Watch

Everything around the player on a /watch page — comments, related videos, the action bar, and the description.

Hide comments area master

The comments and live chat boxes are the noisiest part of any video page. Hide them entirely or keep one and drop the other.

  • Comments

    hideComments CSS Default: Off

    Hides the comments section on regular videos. Comments don't even render — there is nothing to scroll past.

  • Live chat

    hideLiveChat CSS Default: Off

    Hides the live chat panel on premieres and livestreams so you can watch the stream without the chat firehose in your peripheral vision.

Declutter player surroundings master

Strip the watch page back to a video and a title. Each toggle is independent — turn off the master to flip them all at once.

  • Related videos sidebar

    hideRelatedVideos CSS Default: Off

    Hides the up-next sidebar on the right of the player. The video plays full-width on wide screens; on narrow screens the empty column is just removed.

  • End-screen cards

    hideEndScreenCards CSS Default: On

    Hides the cards that overlay the last 5–20 seconds of a video pushing related videos. The video ends when the video ends.

  • Up-next autoplay toggle

    hideAutoplayToggle CSS Default: On

    Removes the autoplay switch from the player controls. Combine with "Related videos sidebar" off to make autoplay practically unreachable.

  • Merch & ticket shelves

    hideMerchShelves CSS Default: On

    Hides the merch, ticket, and product shelves YouTube injects below videos.

  • Hide "Join" / member button

    hideJoinButton CSS Default: On

    Removes the channel-membership "Join" button next to Subscribe. You can still join from the channel page if you ever decide to.

  • Hide notification bell

    hideSubscribeBell CSS Default: On

    Hides the bell icon next to the Subscribe button on a video page. Subscribe stays — just the bell goes.

  • Hide action buttons

    hideWatchActions CSS Default: On

    Hides the Share / Save / Ask / Clip action bar under the video. Like and dislike are controlled separately by the next toggle.

  • Hide like / dislike

    hideLikeDislike CSS Default: On

    Hides the like and dislike buttons and their counts. If a number is going to colour your judgement of a video, this stops it.

  • Collapse description by default

    hideDescription Hybrid Default: Off

    Forces the description to render in its collapsed state. CSS clamps it on first paint; a tiny JS step re-collapses it if YouTube hydrates it expanded. Click the description to read it normally.

Other watch behaviors

Standalone watch-page toggles that don't fit a group.

  • Redirect Shorts to normal video page

    redirectShorts JS Default: On

    When you open a /shorts/<id> URL, the extension immediately navigates to /watch?v=<id>. You get the regular player, full controls, and no vertical-scroll cage. The redirect uses location.replace so Back goes wherever you came from, not back into Shorts.

Blocklist

Two lists of rules — one for keywords, one for channels — that hide matching cards everywhere youZen runs.

Rules

Add a rule from the Blocklist tab in the sidepanel, or right-click any selected text on YouTube to drop it into the keyword or channel list directly.

  • Keyword rules

    blocklistKeywords JS Default: Empty

    Match against a card's title text. Each rule has a mode and a case-sensitivity flag.

    • Substring

      Matches if the title contains the rule text anywhere. Default mode — case-insensitive unless you turn that on.

    • Whole word

      Matches only when the rule text appears as a complete word — useful for short, common terms ("AI" without matching "Brain").

    • Regex

      Matches a JavaScript regular expression. Invalid patterns are silently ignored so a typo never breaks the feed.

  • Channel rules

    blocklistChannels JS Default: Empty

    Match against the channel name or @handle on each card. Same three modes — substring, whole-word, regex — and the same case-sensitivity option.

How matching works

What gets scanned, when, and what happens to matches.

  • Where rules apply

    scope Info Default: All feeds

    Homepage, Subscriptions, search results, the Watch page sidebar, channel pages, and any other surface that uses YouTube's standard video card components. The scanner runs at document_start and re-runs on every DOM mutation, so infinite scroll is covered.

  • What a block does

    effect Info Default: Hide

    Matched cards get a data-ytc-blocked attribute and are hidden via CSS. The card stays in the DOM (so YouTube does not try to refill the slot) but takes up no space and does not respond to hover or clicks.

  • Right-click to add

    right-click Info Default: On

    Highlight any text on a YouTube page and right-click — the menu shows "youZen: Block “…” as keyword" and "youZen: Block channel “…”". Both append a substring rule with case-insensitive matching, idempotent against duplicates.

Pause & global controls

The toggles that aren't per-feature: pausing youZen on a tab or globally, and resetting your settings.

Pause

Two ways to switch youZen off without losing your settings. Both kill every CSS rule and every JS behavior — the page reverts to vanilla YouTube until you flip them back.

  • Per-tab pause

    tabPause Session Default: Off

    Right-click anywhere on a YouTube page and choose "Pause youZen on this tab". The pause lives in chrome.storage.session, so it lasts as long as the tab does and clears when the tab closes. Only the active tab is affected; other tabs keep their settings.

  • Global kill-switch

    globallyPaused Persistent Default: Off

    The big toggle in the sidepanel header. Disables youZen on every YouTube tab, in every window, until you flip it back. Settings, blocklists, and per-toggle state all stay exactly as you left them — pause is purely "stop applying", not "forget".

Appearance

The sidepanel respects your system theme by default and remembers any explicit choice across sessions.

  • Light / dark theme

    theme Persistent Default: Auto (system)

    Click the gear icon in the sidepanel header to toggle dark mode. Until you make a choice, the panel follows prefers-color-scheme; once you pick a side, that choice is stored under "appTheme" and used everywhere.

Reset

Start fresh.

  • Reset to defaults

    reset Action Default: —

    Wipes every youZen-managed key in chrome.storage.local and re-seeds the install defaults. Your blocklist is cleared, every toggle returns to its default state, and the global pause flips back off. There is no undo; the action is local — nothing is sent anywhere.

Privacy

Nothing leaves your browser.

youZen makes zero external network requests. There is no analytics, no telemetry, no remote configuration, no crash reporter, no error beacon. The extension does not register an account and does not sync settings across devices.

Every toggle on this page is stored in chrome.storage.local; per-tab pause lives in chrome.storage.session and clears when the tab closes. Both are browser-local and visible only to the extension itself.

The source is on GitHub — you can read every line, including the test that asserts no analytics keys ship in the install defaults.

Changelog

1.0.0 — first quiet

Initial release. Hide Shorts everywhere, declutter the homepage, watch surroundings, search results. Two-list blocklist with substring / whole-word / regex rules. Per-tab and global pause. Light / dark theme. Reset to defaults.

Found something missing or wrong? Open an issue.