How to hide Youtube videos based on their title using uBlock Origin

I don’t like “reaction videos” as they’re some of the laziest filler material you can come up with. In my experience, 99 out of 100 times, they’re a waste of time for everyone involved. (I feel sorry for the remaining one good video, though.)

Thanks to the new :has() selector (Chrome 105 and up) it’s now trivially easy to filter Youtube lists/grids for videos based on their title.

Take this new-found possibility and combine it with the power of uBlock Origin and you’ll never have to see a reaction video again.

This screenshot shows filters for “reacts” & “reactions”:

Here’s the example filters for copying into your uBO config:

# YT grid view
www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(yt-formatted-string[aria-label*=" REACTION " i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(yt-formatted-string[aria-label*=" REACTS " i])

# YT list/results view
www.youtube.com##ytd-video-renderer:has(yt-formatted-string[aria-label*=" REACTION " i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-video-renderer:has(yt-formatted-string[aria-label*=" REACTS " i])

# YT video wall
www.youtube.com##a.ytp-videowall-still[aria-label*=" REACTION " i]
www.youtube.com##a.ytp-videowall-still[aria-label*=" REACTS " i]

# YT suggested videos bar
www.youtube.com##ytd-compact-video-renderer:has(span[aria-label*=" REACTION " i])
www.youtube.com##ytd-compact-video-renderer:has(span[aria-label*=" REACTS " i])

Notice the extra spaces in " REACTS “ and ” REACTION “, I found they help to prevent false positives (where “reaction” is part of another word). Both filters are case-insensitive, too, so they’ll filter out “reacts”, “REACTS”, “Reacts” etc.

Tags: #youtube #howto #ublockorigin

Update 2022-09-05T17:32:51Z: added filters for YT video wall and YT suggested videos bar.