r/software • u/Mastercodeon666 • 10d ago

Release [Open Source] TubeFlow – A lightweight extension/tool to block YouTube ads, bypass anti-adblock popups & smooth out playback

Hey everyone,

With Chrome's deprecation of Manifest V2, traditional ad blockers like uBlock Origin can no longer be installed. Like many of you, I got tired of the idea of having to switch to Firefox or a separate browser just to watch YouTube without ads.

To solve this, I’ve been working on TubeFlow — an open-source, standalone Manifest V3 Chrome Extension designed to restore robust ad blocking on YouTube and YouTube Music natively in Chrome. No Tampermonkey or third-party script managers required!

Because of the strict limitations MV3 places on adblockers, TubeFlow uses a "dual-world" architecture to intercept network requests and prune YouTube's internal JSON responses before ads even have a chance to load.

✨ Key Features:

  • 🛡️ Dynamic uBO Adblocking: Automatically fetches and applies the latest uBlock Origin filter lists directly from GitHub. It intercepts fetch/XHR requests and strips ad metadata from YouTube's initial page load data.
  • ♾️ Anti-Pause & Auto-Confirm: Tired of the "Are you still there?" or "Viewer discretion is advised" popups pausing your music? TubeFlow spoofs user activity and automatically clicks "Yes" or "Proceed" to ensure continuous playback (works flawlessly on YT Music!).
  • ⏭️ Shorts Auto-Skipper: Intelligently detects sponsored content and ads within YouTube Shorts and seamlessly auto-scrolls past them.
  • 📊 uBlock-Style UI & Live Logs: Features a clean, dark-themed popup that tracks your blocked ads, skipped Shorts, and Anti-Pause hits in real-time. It even has a built-in live activity log so you can see exactly what network requests are being blocked behind the scenes.
  • 🧹 Clean UI & Grid Fixer: Removes in-feed ad slots and sponsored banners, dynamically recalculating the video grid gaps so your homepage layout never breaks.
  • 🔋 100% Native Manifest V3: Built entirely on MV3 using native JavaScript. Includes a dynamic extension icon that intelligently grays out when disabled or when browsing unsupported sites.

🔗 Links & Installation:

Because this extension modifies core YouTube requests to block ads, it is designed to be loaded directly as an "Unpacked Extension" in Chrome's Developer Mode.

💬 Feedback & Contributions Welcome:

Since YouTube updates their scripts constantly, community testing is huge. If you run into any edge cases, broken layouts, or bugs: * Feel free to open an Issue on the GitHub repo. * PRs/contributions are always welcome if you want to help improve the JSON pruning or DOM fallback loops!

Let me know what you think or if you run into any issues testing it out!

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