Weekly Shot 1 — Supercharge your Browser
This is a new venture we’d like to start out, where every week we’ll be taking a look at the latest in technology — from computers to smart phones, virtual machines to cloud computing and everything in between. We hope to guide you from a tech noob to a 21st century technocrat. Without further ado, let’s begin with this week’s topic — How to best optimize and deck out your browser for the ULTIMATE browsing experience.
I’ll be dividing the following shots into 2 categories — Beginner and Advanced. The beginner ones being easy to install and give the most benefit without a ton of work. The advanced ones, even though are a little more involved will give you the maximum benefits you can possibly get.
Beginner Shots
Ad blocking is an absolute necessity in 2021 and there are a number of adblockers out there but uBlock Origin is by far, one of the best adblockers. It comes as an extension in chrome webstore of chromium based browsers and in the Firefox webstore as well. Links:
Chromium Based Browsers (Chrome, Edge)
This is the go to extension for taking your YouTube watching experience to the next level. It comes packed with features with the most notable being : Auto skipping YouTube Ads, various themes, mouse and keyboard shortcuts, volume boost, pop-out player and so much more. This, combined with SponsorBlock, which auto-skips various segments in videos (sponsorships, intro animation etc) makes your YouTube experience almost seem like magic for the first time you use it. Links:
Enhancer For YouTube — Chrome Webstore(Use for Edge as well)
Enhancer of YouTube — Firefox Add-ons
SponsorBlock — Chrome Webstore
SponsorBlock — Firefox Add-ons
A modern day essential for the 21st century vampires — dark mode everything in your browser. Links:
Dark Reader — Chrome Webstore
Dark Reader — Firefox Add-ons
Ever feel bogged down by the amount of tabs you have open and needed something to declutter your space? Fear not, OneTab does exactly that. It lists all the tabs open into a list and you an individually open each or restore all when needed. It also saves you precious memory and CPU hogged by unused tabs. Links:
One Tab — Chrome Webstore
OneTab — Firefox Add-ons
Advanced Shots
These involve multiple steps in order to get them working properly but I recommend you put in 5 additional minutes of your time to do it. Lets begin!
Tampermonkey is a user script manager for the browser which lets you execute custom scripts to add or remove functionality to certain websites. This may include paywall bypass, adblocking, etc. Install Tampermonkey from the following links:
Tampermonkey — Chrome Webstore
Tampermonkey — Firefox Add-ons
Once it is installed, these are some scripts I’d recommend you install:
- ReCaptcha Automatizer: Passes ReCaptcha automatically.
2. Burlesco: Removes paywall on certain websites like nytimes and wsj.
3. Anti-anti-copy: Some websites prevent you from copying text. This script bypass it.
4. AntiAdware: Removes forced download accelerators, managers, and adware on supported websites
This is another adblocker, in fact built upon uBlock Origin but also quietly clicks on every blocked ad, registering a visit on ad networks' databases so that no usable personalized ad tracking data can be collected. Installation for Firefox is as simple as downloading the browser extension from here. For chromium based browsers, the installation is a bit more involved.
First, enable developer mode in Chrome/Edge by going to chrome://extensions or edge://extensions.
Once that is done, download the latest release of AdNauseum for chromium from here. Unpack the folder and place it in a location where you wouldn’t delete it easily.
Next, click the 'Load unpacked extension' button and navigate to the folder you downloaded and unpacked. Make sure you select the folder with the name 'adnauseam.chromium' (without a version number). Done!
This extension is a much more powerful version of the previous userscript we installed to bypass paywalls. It supports paywall bypass of several hundred sites, mostly news sites. To install on Firefox, it’s as simple as downloading the extension from here. For Chrome/Edge, the procedure is very similar to the previous installation.
Download the latest version of Bypass Paywalls Clean from here.
Unzip the folder and place in a location where you wouldn’t delete it easily. Next, click the 'Load unpacked extension' button in the extensions tab and navigate to the folder you downloaded and unpacked. Done!
That will be all for this week’s shot. Are there any other tools I missed? Mention it in the comments below. Give it a clap if you liked what you read. Thanks and have a great day :)
