Youtube-Pro-Plus: a YouTube rewrite that lives entirely in your browser

The repository is a set of injected scripts, not a service

YouTube Pro Plus is a JavaScript browser extension that changes how the YouTube site renders and behaves inside the browser you already use. There is no server component and no account system. The file listing at the repository root shows the split clearly: manifest.json and popup.html describe the extension itself, content.js and content-scripts/ hold the code that runs inside the page, background.js and background-sw.js are the background pieces, and the stylesheets theme.css, features.css and block-popups.css carry the visual redesign. Feature work is split into files named after the feature itself, such as inject-speed.js, inject-download.js, sound-booster.js, sponsorblock.js, default-quality.js and return-youtube-dislike.js. Two files, gate.js and browser-compat.js, sit outside that naming scheme, and the rules/ directory plus _metadata/ directory hold supporting data. For an engineer, the useful conclusion is that anything you want to change about the behaviour of this project is a matter of editing page-level scripts, not of reconfiguring a backend.

The popup is the entire control surface

Configuration happens in one place. The README's usage section says to click the extension icon in the browser toolbar to open the Liquid Glass settings popup, and from there every feature can be toggled on or off in real time. There is no settings file to edit, no environment variable to set, and no documented configuration file in the repository root. That simplicity is a real advantage for a tool that changes a website you visit hundreds of times a day: a change of mind is one click, not a rebuild. It also means every switch is a runtime toggle rather than a compile-time decision, so the same build can behave differently for two people depending on which boxes they have ticked. The README describes individual toggles for the download button, the default video quality, and the visual modes, and mentions that the original YouTube download button can be brought back by turning off the download setting. Extensions installed from the Firefox or Edge stores can also be updated through those stores, whereas a ZIP loaded unpacked has to be refreshed by hand.

Getting the extension onto a Chromium browser

The project is published where you would expect: the Firefox add-on store, the Microsoft Edge add-on store, and a downloadable ZIP of the latest release on GitHub. The README badges record the supported platforms and the version line that the store listings carry:

 ![Version](https://img.shields.io/badge/version-7.1.9-blue.svg)
 ![Platform](https://img.shields.io/badge/platform-Firefox%20%7C%20Edge%20%7C%20Chromium-green.svg)

For Chrome, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi and other Chromium browsers, the README describes a manual path instead: download the latest release ZIP from the releases page, extract it, open the browser's extensions page, turn on the Developer mode switch, then use the Load unpacked button and select the extracted Youtube-Pro-Plus-main folder. The page it gives for Chrome is `chrome://extensions/`, with `opera://extensions/` and `brave://extensions/` named for the other two. One warning in that list is easy to skip and worth honouring: the README asks you to disable conflicting Tampermonkey scripts and Stylus themes, since two tools rewriting the same pages will fight. The picture-in-picture mode carries a separate note that it needs two browser flags, which is the one feature that goes beyond a normal extension install.

Every feature is hostage to YouTube's DOM

The project states its own fragility in the disclaimer. The extension modifies YouTube's native DOM and playback variables, and if YouTube updates its interface then features such as the Shorts Auto-Scroller or the Speed Booster may temporarily stop working until the selectors are updated in the code. That is the defining constraint of the whole design. Nothing here talks to a YouTube API, so there is no version negotiation and no fallback: a selector that no longer matches produces a feature that simply does nothing. The 10x Speed Booster sits in the same category, since it works by pushing past YouTube's native 2x speed limit from inside the native player settings. The Shorts Auto-Scroller is described as a background script that detects when a Short finishes and scrolls to the next one, which is exactly the kind of behaviour that depends on the current player markup and the current Shorts DOM. The honest way to read the release history is as a sequence of repairs against a moving target: v7.1.4 on 2026-09-24 was bug fixes, v7.1.7 on 2026-09-30 was minor fixes and improvements, and v7.1.9 on 2026-10-02 added a new feature alongside fixes.

The download button hands the hard part to someone else

Smart Download replaces YouTube's own download button with a third-party download path, and the README is direct about the consequence: the download feature depends entirely on third-party websites, so it can stop working at any time. Nothing in the repository appears to host those conversion or delivery services, which means the extension author does not control the most failure-prone part of the chain. If the original button is wanted, the README says to turn the setting off in the extension. This is the feature most likely to surprise a user, because it looks like a native YouTube control until it fails, and because it introduces an outbound dependency the user did not choose. The download logic lives in inject-download.js, so a reader who wants to see exactly what the button does before trusting it has a single file to read. Any evaluation should treat that file as the deciding evidence rather than the feature list.

SponsorBlock and the dislike counter arrive preinstalled

Several popular standalone extensions are folded into this one, which changes the trade-off for a new user. SponsorBlock is built in, so there is no separate install for segment skipping, and the repository carries a sponsorblock.js file at its root. return-youtube-dislike.js points at a feature that integrates the dislike count into the interface. The Premium Logo Toggle swaps the standard YouTube logo for the YouTube Premium logo, which on the description given is a visual replacement of the logo rather than any change to what the account is entitled to. Alongside these sit the items that are less common elsewhere: a sound booster for the audio, a default video quality setting that lets the stream settle at whatever your connection supports, frame screenshots through the alt+shift+s shortcut or an in-player camera icon, a miniplayer that appears when you scroll down, a cinematic mode and an expanded ambient mode, and a watch history that resumes videos where you stopped and reports your all-time top five videos and channels. The README describes the Shorts Auto-Scroller and the theme as its headline additions.

A proprietary codebase in an open source looking repository

The repository is hosted on GitHub and written in JavaScript, but the licence file makes clear that this is not open source in the usual sense. The README states Copyright 2026 Archimetrix, All Rights Reserved, and describes the repository and its contents as proprietary. The wording prohibits copying, reproducing, distributing, publishing, displaying, performing, modifying, creating derivative works, transmitting or exploiting the content, and it forbids distributing any part of it over any network, including a local area network, selling it or offering it for sale, or using it to build a database of any kind. That is a much tighter set of terms than an MIT or Apache licence, and it is not legal advice, but the practical effect is clear. You can run the published builds, you cannot ship this code inside your own product, and you cannot fork it to fix the selectors when YouTube breaks them. The GitHub metadata classifies the licence as Other because it is a custom one, which is another signal to a procurement team that this needs review rather than a quick approval.

Maintenance is tied to a site the project does not control

The project is not archived, and the last push to the repository was on 2026-10-14. Releases landed close together before that, on 2026-09-24, 2026-09-30 and 2026-10-02. So the code is being changed, and recent changes are largely about keeping features working and adding one. That is a weaker signal than it looks, because the maintenance burden here is not ordinary. A typical extension goes stale when its author loses interest; this one goes stale when YouTube ships a redesign, and the response is a patch that restores behaviour for whatever selectors changed. Anyone budgeting for this project should assume recurring maintenance work of a particular kind: reproducing the break, identifying the new selectors, and editing the relevant content script. Users on the store listings receive those fixes through store updates, while anyone who loaded a ZIP unpacked has to replace the folder manually to get the same result.

Editorial conclusion

Individual viewers who want a different YouTube layout and do not mind losing features when YouTube redesigns its pages will get value from this extension; teams that need a supported, redistributable dependency should look elsewhere, because the licence forbids copying and modifying the code and the repository is maintained by one author against an interface it does not control. Before adopting it, load the ZIP in a throwaway profile, confirm the features you care about work on today's YouTube, and check the terms of the store you install from.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Archimetrix/Youtube-Pro-Plus on GitHub
2. Issues
3. README
4. Releases