Turn Off Youtube Annotations Using JavaScript

javascript, youtube

Solution

Since youtube sometimes changes the players’s behaviour, I’ll try to keep the code up to date and as robust as possible.

var settings_button = document.querySelector(".ytp-settings-button");
settings_button.click(); settings_button.click(); // open and close settings, so annotations label is created

var all_labels = document.getElementsByClassName("ytp-menuitem-label");
for (var i = 0; i < all_labels.length; i++) {
  if ((all_labels[i].innerHTML == "Annotations") && (all_labels[i].parentNode.getAttribute("aria-checked") == "true")) { // find the correct label and see if it is active
    all_labels[i].click(); // and in that case, click it
  }
}

Problem

There’re currently three ways I know of, to disable annotations in youtube videos: - You can use the YouTube settings. This will not work for me, as I do not have (nor want) an account. - You can use a specialised extension. That might work, but I’d rather not have a full-fledge extension with a ton of options, just for that. - You can use a (ad)blocking extension, and add `||youtube.com/annotations_` to its filters. That suffers from the same issue as the previous point. In addition, it disables them completely, while I simply want them turned off by default (so I have the option to turn them on). Is it possible to do it using JavaScript? I have a UserScript that already performs some modifications to YouTube’s website, so ideally I’d like to expand it. That’s really the last thing I’m missing. I ask that answers be constrained to using JS and not browser extensions recommendations. Both because (as mentioned), I already know about those, and because this is as much about the learning process as it is about the result. It’s practice for more UserScripts.

Original source

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