It's time for another video about cool browser extensions. It's been a while since I made one.
And in this video, I've got nine really cool Chrome extensions
that are also available for Firefox for most of them. And if they aren't,
then I'll mention that and give an equivalent that is available for Firefox.
And of course, I'll put all links to everything in the description. First of all though, I have a
bonus extension because I've mentioned it before, it's not part of the nine. And that allows you to
toggle on and off extensions, you don't have to keep them all enabled. And it's called extensity.
And what I like about this one is, a lot of these extensions require a lot of permissions.
Like it requires access to everything you look at. And I only use them maybe once in a while,
for specific situations. So I don't wanna have it
enabled all the time, or maybe I just don't want it cluttering up Chrome.
So with this extension, you can simply toggle on or off any extensions whenever you want.
So if there's one that you only use every once in a while, you can just toggle it on when you need
it, turn it off right after that. Unfortunately, with Firefox, it doesn't allow extensions to
manage other extensions. So there's nothing like that for Firefox. However, if you're technically
inclined, someone did post a custom script, you can install as like an add-on to Firefox.
That will basically work the same way, but you'll have to get that set up
yourself. I'll still put the link to the GitHub Repo in the description.
All right so getting into the actual nine extensions for this video, the first one
we have is called Font Fingerprint Defender, and this one's really cool
and you might not have ever thought it was a thing that was necessary. So for context,
you probably know that data companies and websites track you in a lot of different
ways. And if you thought that blocking cookies was enough, think again, because there is other
ways they can track you, including the data that your browser itself gives to these websites.
So if you wanna see specifically, you can check out a website called AmIUnique.org,
and it will basically show you your browser fingerprint, you can think of it as, and it
shows you all the different things that are unique about your browser that allows websites to track
you. So this includes things like your operating system, your screen resolution, and what fonts
you have installed on your system and you could probably see where this is going.
This site also tells you what percentage of users had this particular setting that you do.
So you can probably imagine if you have all these different
factors, it's not gonna be hard to track you uniquely. And it says I do have a unique thing.
So simply with this information, not even with cookies,
services could be tracking me across many different websites. And here's where this
font fingerprint defender extension comes in. So I have a whole bunch of custom fonts
installed on my system, which would make it extremely easy to track me uniquely.
And what this extension does is randomly adds fonts that your browser tells websites
that it has installed, so that it effectively ruins the website's ability to track you,
if it's using fonts as part of that factor. So for example without this extension enabled,
it shows that I have a few fonts plus 167 installed.
But if I enable the extension, if I reload and do the fingerprint test again, it now says 1026.
And if I refresh and close out the page and do it again,
it now says 1023, so it's constantly changing. So if some data company is tracking you based
on what fonts you have installed or as part of the rest of your fingerprint fonts installed,
it's gonna basically think every different session is a different person,
it makes it useless. So yes, every one of these fingerprint sessions will be unique. However,
it's gonna be separate from all the other ones, so it doesn't really help them. So anyway,
it's just a passive thing that goes on in the background and I like to have
it. Alright next step we have one that is way easier to understand and it is,
I Don't Care About Cookies. You know after the GDPR law was passed in the European union, how now
almost every website pops up this stupid thing, asking if you want to enable cookies. Well,
this extension simply blocks those requests, which if they don't get explicit requests from you,
then that's the equivalent of rejecting them all. So you can see this example,
if I go to nature.com, this huge thing pops up.
It takes like a third of the screen up. But if I go and enable the extension,
it no longer shows up. It does have some basic settings, like the ability to whitelist some
websites or disable it for the individual site. So it might break some things, I've never come across
that, but it might. And apparently if a website does require cookies, it will accept the minimum.
But I think in other cases, it'll just automatically accept all,
but I think that's more rare. Either way, you're not gonna see any of these requests anymore,
at least most of the time. All right before we move on, I have another bonus extension and
it's also the sponsor of today's video, Guardio. Guardio is a Chrome extension that provides real
time protection from all sorts of threats while browsing the web, even unexpected places like
Google search result ads. For example, it blocks malicious sites using more than just blacklists,
but also in-house developed methods for detecting fishing and malware sites.
And that's all before the threats even have a chance to do any harm. It also scans your other
browser extensions and alerts you if there are any disguised malicious extensions installed.
And for websites that generate shady notifications after tricking you into enabling them,
Guardio will trace the actual source of these notifications and eliminate them.
Plus, there are other features such as information leak monitoring, which like
I've mentioned many times happens way more than you think. And search hijack correction, if any
sites attempt to change your browser settings without permission. Guardio also blocks other
scam related sites like those involving crypto scams to steal your wallet info and even blocks
sites used in scams that try to have you install remote desktop software for malicious purposes.
You can scan your browser for threats for free by visiting Guard.io/ ThioJoe and installing
the extension. And you'll also get a seven day free trial to the premium features such as real
time threat removal. So if you want to clean and secure browsing experience again, visit Guard.io/
ThioJoe, link the description, and to check out their affordable premium plan for full protection.
And with all that being said, let's continue. All right number three,
we have an extension called Bionic Reading, which makes it way easier to read large
blocks of text. Basically, if you're on a website with an article or something,
you click the extension and it'll bring up a simplified page with all the text.
And it basically bolds the first parts of the word. And for me personally,
it really does work. So I'd recommend at least trying it out. Also on the top of the page,
you can see that there's a bunch of settings you can choose. So for example the font type,
the font size, the spacing between the letters, words, or lines, or all three.
The contrast of the bolded letters, the margin size stuff like that,
you can just customize it all. Now, one thing to point out is this extension is
only available for Google Chrome. However, on the bionic reading website they, do have a page
where you can simply paste in a URL and it shows the exact same
page as if you had the extension. So basically you can just bookmark this page
and if you wanna read a website like that, you can just paste it in here. And it also
actually supports uploading, like word documents, other text documents and stuff
like that. So no matter what browser you're using, you can still take advantage of this.
All right moving on, we have one that you might have actually heard of before, it is
Return YouTube Dislike. You know when YouTube disabled the dislike counts
on videos? Well this extension brings them back. Now it doesn't actually show the official count.
Basically it depends on all the other people using the browser.
And then it takes that data whenever someone dislikes it, who uses the browser, it counts
those. However, there are millions of users, so it still is useful. And
also before YouTube did disable the button, I believe they went and tried to archive as many
dislike counts as they could. So a lot of the more popular videos will actually have a dislike count
that is probably closer to what the real one is. Moving on, we have an extension called SuperCopy,
which is for all those websites that you may have come across occasionally,
that block the ability to right click or copy text from it. You can see this random website
I found as an example. It doesn't even let you highlight, left click to highlight anything.
And if you try to right click, it pops up to this thing that says, don't copy text.
However, if we go up to the extension, click it,
and then there's a button you press to actually enable the extension on the site. And now I can
highlight and copy whatever text I want. Now, this extension is not available on Firefox.
However, there is an alternative that seems to be extremely well rated. And that is called Absolute
Enable, Right Click & Copy. So that's probably the one I would recommend if you're on Firefox.
This next extension is really similar to the last one, except it's for pasting. I believe
the SuperCopy says that it enables pasting for websites to block it, but I think that's
just if they block right click. Whereas this extension, which is called don't F with paste,
is specifically for websites that block pasting specifically. And for some reason, a lot of
websites do this like bank websites, apparently, if you're putting in your account number,
it doesn't let you paste it. Even though that's something you probably just wanna copy and paste
so you know it's correct. So if you're on a website where SuperCopy doesn't work for pasting,
then this one will because it's purpose made for that. And how it does work is you simply click
the icon and then either hit save, or I think you can hit add, and it'll make it enabled on
that site. All right now we still got a few more, and this next one is called Unpaywall.
And this is great for anyone who does research as part of school or work or whatever. A lot of
times you may come across some sort of scientific journal article or other academic journal article,
and it'll be pay-walled. It'll either just show
you the abstract and it'll require you to pay to see the whole article.
However, a lot of times these articles are actually freely available and legally on other
official sites, where they may have published it earlier from the author itself. So what this
extension does is simply checks those other resources. So for example, this is an article
on nature.com and it says the abstract but it doesn't show you the rest, it says subscription,
you have to pay. However, if we look at the right hand side, the green
lock, if we click it for the paywall extension, it now brings us to the actual original article PDF,
which is on arXiv which is like a clearing house for where a lot of academic journals
get uploaded. And it literally just shows the entire article, so you don't have to pay for it.
And this works for a lot of different articles. It won't work on every single one, so this is
another example where it's grayed out and if you click it says it couldn't find any legally opens-
access available sources. So it's not gonna work everywhere, but good to know
about still. All right for number eight, this one isn't gonna be too useful for everyone,
but for those who it is useful to, you're gonna love it. And this extension is called SVG export
and it basically just finds all the SVG vector image files on a website. If you don't know what
that means, don't worry about it. And if you click the extension, you could see now what I mean,
vector images are usually used for icons and stuff, and they scale up infinitely.
So if you're some kind of graphic designer, or you just wanna use an icon somewhere that
you find on a website, you can now see them here, export them all. You can select multiple,
export it as the original SVG, as a JPEG, a PNG, download multiple, just one,
whatever you want. Of course do be aware of the copyright aspect of this.
If you're just using the icons for personal use, it's not gonna matter, but I wouldn't be
stealing these icons off some website and then reusing it for your own commercial purpose.
Just be aware of that. All right finally, we have an extension called Window Resizer, which might be
useful if you're ever making a screen recording, maybe for work or some kind of presentation.
And it's very simple what it does. It just resizes your web browser extension window
to whatever size you specify. And the reason this is good, if you're doing a screen recording,
is that so you can be sure that whatever resolution you record at is gonna scale well.
So say you have some high res 4K monitor, and you're recording in full screen.
Well, you know how everything looks tiny on the monitor. And then if you go to record
that anyone watching it is not gonna be able to see almost anything that you're recording.
Whereas if you shrink down the web browser window to say, like 1080p or 720p,
and then just record that section. Then when someone looks at that video that you recorded,
it'll look bigger and actually easier to view.
If you're on Firefox, you have to use a different extension. There's several of these,
but one that I found that seems decent is called Window Sizer,
so that's the one that I would go for there. So that's about it. If you guys enjoyed this video,
let me know what you think down to the comments. Thanks again to Guardio for sponsoring this video.
Be sure to visit Guard.io/ ThioJoe and scan your browser for threats
for free. And that link is also in the description. If you wanna keep watching,
next I'd recommend a video I made talking about a really useful set of programs that
you may not have heard of before. I'd recommend clicking that right there.
So thanks so much for watching guys, and I'll see you in the next one.