Reviews for DeArrow - Better Titles and Thumbnails on YouTube
DeArrow - Better Titles and Thumbnails on YouTube by Ajay (SponsorBlock)
Review by Firefox user 17761284
Rated 1 out of 5
by Firefox user 17761284, 5 months agoEDIT: dev response is wrong, i understand what dearrow is, i read the description of the addon before i paid for it LOL. the problem is that it sucks at doing what it says it does for fundamental reasons.
clickbait = "sensational and unappealing packaging (the titles and thumbnails)" and tons of clickbait thumbnails and titles get through dearrow because this addon requires users of an addon who're allergic to clickbait already to willingly submit themselves to enduring low quality content in order to submit a new relevant title and thumbnail and remove said clickbait with dearrow. it just won't happen and prevents the addon from working as intended
dev, i recommend removing the crowdsourcing element of this addon *or* merely asking for donations instead of outright payment. you can't do both and you can't expect people to pay you to do work for you. a refund is actually kind of a ridiculous thing to offer. you want me to hop in your email to beg for a dollar? get real LOL. when you ask for payment you invite criticism and a refund is not relevant.
original review below --------------------------------------
I paid a dollar for this app expecting to remove the clickbait from my Youtube experience but instead most of the actual clickbait (content farm videos with 1mil+ views) continue to appear unaltered while the titles from any even mildly popular genuine video creator get stripped of all creativity and even narratively spoiled in some cases.
the problem is fundamental due to the fact that this app is crowdsourced and because most of the actual clickbait is from channels that are so low quality that even the users of this app don't want to put in the effort to fix it. meanwhile the videos people actually put effort into get neutered because some geek thought the title wasn't definitionally accurate enough.
that's another thing, why are we paying to crowdsource our work? i only realized i was paying to work after i forked it over so shame on me i guess but it certainly left a slimy taste in my mouth afterwards.
clickbait = "sensational and unappealing packaging (the titles and thumbnails)" and tons of clickbait thumbnails and titles get through dearrow because this addon requires users of an addon who're allergic to clickbait already to willingly submit themselves to enduring low quality content in order to submit a new relevant title and thumbnail and remove said clickbait with dearrow. it just won't happen and prevents the addon from working as intended
dev, i recommend removing the crowdsourcing element of this addon *or* merely asking for donations instead of outright payment. you can't do both and you can't expect people to pay you to do work for you. a refund is actually kind of a ridiculous thing to offer. you want me to hop in your email to beg for a dollar? get real LOL. when you ask for payment you invite criticism and a refund is not relevant.
original review below --------------------------------------
I paid a dollar for this app expecting to remove the clickbait from my Youtube experience but instead most of the actual clickbait (content farm videos with 1mil+ views) continue to appear unaltered while the titles from any even mildly popular genuine video creator get stripped of all creativity and even narratively spoiled in some cases.
the problem is fundamental due to the fact that this app is crowdsourced and because most of the actual clickbait is from channels that are so low quality that even the users of this app don't want to put in the effort to fix it. meanwhile the videos people actually put effort into get neutered because some geek thought the title wasn't definitionally accurate enough.
that's another thing, why are we paying to crowdsource our work? i only realized i was paying to work after i forked it over so shame on me i guess but it certainly left a slimy taste in my mouth afterwards.
Developer response
posted 5 months agoI am happy to fully refund you, send me an email dev@ajay.app
You seem to be looking for something different from what DeArrow is.
DeArrow at the moment is not for filtering and hiding videos that are low quality, but instead of about reducing sensationalism in all videos (the high quality ones too). You seem to be looking for something very different, which is fine.
When I look at my YouTube feed, I see many high quality videos created by great people. The problem is that they are all obscured by sensational and unappealing packaging (the titles and thumbnails).
The goal of DeArrow is to be able to look at that feed of already high quality videos without having to deal with the current sensationalist title/thumbnail trends and know what which of those videos to choose from based on what their actual content is.
I hope that makes the purpose more clear :)
You seem to be looking for something different from what DeArrow is.
DeArrow at the moment is not for filtering and hiding videos that are low quality, but instead of about reducing sensationalism in all videos (the high quality ones too). You seem to be looking for something very different, which is fine.
When I look at my YouTube feed, I see many high quality videos created by great people. The problem is that they are all obscured by sensational and unappealing packaging (the titles and thumbnails).
The goal of DeArrow is to be able to look at that feed of already high quality videos without having to deal with the current sensationalist title/thumbnail trends and know what which of those videos to choose from based on what their actual content is.
I hope that makes the purpose more clear :)
208 reviews
- Rated 1 out of 5by qwertyuiop, 2 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Tuana, 7 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by dikunav, 9 days ago
- Rated 2 out of 5by AmberDambey, 14 days ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Wuzzle, a month agoMy own feelings about the lead dev aside (I dislike him for personal reasons), this addon isn't very good, a lot of the rules and guidelines as well as the nature of the extension lead to titles and thumbnails that are subjectively clickbait and/or bad being treated as objectively clickbait and/or bad and being replaced with titles and thumbnails not suited to the content of the video with an overly complex whitelisting system not helping matters in the slightest.
It also asks for payment up front to use it right away, which is very shady for an extension. Though if asked, the lead dev will give you a code if you ask for one in a review, though not in exchange for a review, or ask on his discord server.
EDIT: Since the dev took time out of his busy day and replied to this review I will provide further context and say that these reasons were not communicated to me at all until after he'd removed my moderator status and blocked me and that I had to complain on his public discord server in order to get a response from him, which boiled down to "People were complaining about your attitude" which I was entirely unaware of and thus I was not given a chance to fix this problem until it was too late
If there were any other reasons besides that, then those were never communicated to me either
Also clarified some language about keys and reviewsDeveloper response
posted a month agoFor context, this person was formerly a sponsorblock and dearrow "VIP"/moderator that we unfortunately decided to demote for several reasons - Rated 5 out of 5by kloassie, a month agoWorks like a charm. I have the free 'version' bc I don't have a credit card (no need) and no paypal (don't trust pp), but when I find a suitable way to donate, I will. Anyways, I'd like an option to personally whitelist channels for showing original thumbnails - eg music channels that continuously show babes as thumbnails, I don't mind those polluting my view :-P
Developer response
posted a month agoCheck out the settings and "channel allowlist" feature. You can make a custom profile with whatever settings you want for specific subsets of channels. - Rated 5 out of 5by schammelam, a month ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by FF user 17083219, a month agowhat the addon description purposefully omits, is the crucial fact that you cannot in fact use the addon at all, even if you cannot pay. i clicked that option and its still asking me to pay, or wait for a multitude of hours. What is the reason for this other than to annoy and coerce the user? absolute garbage and greed.
Developer response
posted a month agoYou can use it for free after waiting a few hours if you do not want or cannot pay, and while waiting, you can use the free trial. - Rated 4 out of 5by Bakaba, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 17476401, a month ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by Speedy, a month agoIt's a fine extension, it does what it is supposed to do however the concept gets ruined by moronic title edits made by idiots. So often I see fine, non-problematic titles being replaced with a non-descriptive mess. Important/valuable information gets removed for the sake of being changed, and I end up thinking "who thought this edit would be a good idea?" so often.
For example, this video:
"BETA SQUAD MAFIA GAME FT DEJI (CHILLI FORFEIT)"
gets changed to:
"Mafia E11"
whereas a better title would be:
"Beta Squad: Mafia E11 ft. Deji"
Here's another stupid change on a video from Techquickie:
Original: "Why do speakers hiss?"
Replaced: "speaker Noise: Hiss and Hum"
I try using the voting feature to downvote the awful new titles / I try to submit my own but I have no idea if it does anything as I never see anything change. The thumbs up/down emoji does a twirl and there's no indication if it did anything or what it does. This panel really needs some improvement. - Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 18403227, a month agoKNOW BEFORE BUYING:
Don't expect a name to change. In practice, there was a 1% or less change in the names of videos I watched. Enabling DeArrow mostly changed capitalization.
Re-titles are user-submitted only. There will be NO title change unless a user has submitted one.Developer response
posted a month agoYou can use the trial to see how much coverage the types of videos you watch have, or share it around with others with similar interests to you to spread it in that community :) - Rated 5 out of 5by Bee, a month agoThis makes YouTube an infinitely better user experience! I really appreciate the lack of visual clutter all the loud thumbnails cause especially. It does make my subscriptions & home page load a little more slowly, but that's well worth it in my opinion.
For some channels I'm subscribed to (like crochet/craft channels), I found I missed the thumbnails because those show the finished craft product, thankfully it was easy to whitelist those.
I did also change the default thumbnail replacement from "random" to "auto-generated by YouTube", which led to less awkward half-blink faces in my feed.
Once activated, the extension immediately worked on all my devices where I'm logged in to Firefox, and I was able to re-use the activation code on a shared family device where I am not logged in on my Firefox account. Overall, a great experience and well worth the 1 euro.
One minor negative is that in some interfaces (like browsing a channel's videos) the blue logo button doesn't work to view the original title/thumbnail, because it will open the video link instead.Developer response
posted a month ago> One minor negative is that in some interfaces (like browsing a channel's videos) the blue logo button doesn't work to view the original title/thumbnail, because it will open the video link instead.
Hmm, maybe that is because of a new YouTube layout. I'll look into it. - Rated 1 out of 5by Chloe, a month agodoesn't work, random thumbnails are showing up completely unchanged. shame that this extension used to work and is now utterly broken
Developer response
posted a month agoSend me an email and I can try to help you trouble shoot: dev @ ajay.app
You could also try uninstalling and reinstalling in case it was a config change that caused it - Rated 3 out of 5by Barrett Ray, a month agoNice extension. Docked a couple stars because the guideline to capitalize replacement titles like "a sentence" is ridiculous and looks horrible.
Please add an option to convert _only_ the replacement titles into "Title Case." Otherwise, normal titles containing phrases like "ABC" or "NASA" become "Abc" and "Nasa."
On the other hand, an option to make Title Case only affect lowercase words would be great.
Happy to send in a PR. Just let me know.Developer response
posted a month agoSubmitting a title in "sentence" form is explicitly for those cases. Also, "NASA" is on the list of allowed all caps words so should not be modified by the formatter.
If the title is formatted as a sentence, and some words are proper nouns, the extension will know not to force those to be lower case if someone chooses the sentence case option. If everyone submitted titles as "Title Case", then the extension would not know which words to leave with a capital and which not to for those that prefer sentence-like casing.
I think what you're looking for is a separate formatting option for original titles and submitted titles, which at the moment is not an option implemented - Rated 4 out of 5by Iceyhammer, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Frans, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by cyber, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by aNkIt9607, 2 months agoLoved this one. I recommend to everyone to use this extension to save yourself from clickbats thumbnail
- Rated 1 out of 5by Kirby, 2 months agoomg all the video thumbnails just flicker non stop and slows/freezes the whole browser
Developer response
posted 2 months agoDo you maybe have another extension that affects YouTube thumbnails? - Rated 5 out of 5by Caio, 2 months agoPaid extension? I am not buying anything!
EDIT: Is it donationware? I will test it, maybe I can make a contribution. - Rated 1 out of 5by intars, 2 months ago