We do love YouTube and the awesome user-generated resource of cool timely videos it has grown into over time. We love its variety and flexibility: we have seen already how to search YouTube like a PRO, how to control the player using keyboard shortcuts and how to use YouTube Editor. There is really something for anyone there.

However you can’t please everyone all the time and there are many people who find some of YouTube’s features annoying (while loving the resource overall). Let’s try to cope with the most popular YouTube annoyances:

1. Autoplay

As well as the buffering feature which forces the video to play immediately once the page loads, and then stops the video frequently to buffer it.

2. Video quality

There is no good way to choose the default quality of a video (based on your preferences and connection settings).

3. Advertisements Embedded Within A Video

Clicking X to close an advert again and again in each video you watch is really disturbing.

4. No Way To Easily Access Some Great Built-In Features

For example, there is no way to loop videos selectively.

Here are a few userscripts that cope with all of these annoyances effectively:

YouTube HD Ultimate

YouTube HD Ultimate is a userscript which forces YouTube to select the highest video quality a user’s computer can handle (with options to lower it if the computer has problems playing 1080px videos).

Supported Browsers

FireFox (via Greasemonkey) and Opera.

Options

Options can be found in the upper-right-hand corner of a YouTube page:

From there (among other things) you can:

• Set the default quality of each video;
• Enable / disable autoplay;
• Hide / show annotations.

If you hover over any option settings, you’ll see a short explanation as well as the general recommendations as to how to use each one:

YouTube Enhancer

YouTube Enhancer is a feature-rich userscript similar to the above one with more cross-browser compatibility options and a different feature layout.

Supported Browsers

FireFox (via Greasemonkey), Opera, Google Chrome (the latest version), Flock, Safari, SeaMonkey (with a patch).

The script installs its own player controls that allow to play, pause, loop, rewind, download and even convert the current video as well as set the quality:

The script also has global options for all YouTube videos accessed via the “General options” link on top of the video:

YouTube Auto Buffer & Auto HD & Remove Ads

YouTube Auto Buffer & Auto HD & Remove Ads is a userscript whose name speaks pretty much for itself. Its main feature is removing adverts embedded into the videos. Besides that, it buffers the video without autoplaying and puts it in HD if the option is on.

Supported Browsers

FireFox (via Greasemonkey) and Opera (with some reported issues with Autobuffer Options).

The script options are nicely integrated into the YouTube interface allowing you to:

• Choose between autoplay / autobuffer options;
• Set the default quality;
• Hide in-video ads:

Note: there’s one minor annoyance with the tool which you may notice: the script allows the video to play for a second and then pauses it.

Endless YouTube

Endless YouTube: If you are one of those people who tend to watch or listen to one and the same music / video clip over and over again, this script is right for you. It enables you to loop the whole video or a part of it for it to play over and over until you close the tab.

Supported Browser

FireFox (via Greasemonkey).

Just set the time interval you want to loop or click “Loop video” to play the whole clip again and again:

Are there any other YouTube annoyances you wish you could cope with? Let’s try to find the solutions together!