promoblast

YouTube PromoBlast

A Chrome extension that automatically hides promotional and sponsored videos from YouTube — with a satisfying explosion effect.

Features

• Blocks promoted videos from home feed, channel pages, and search results
• Blocks ad-slot videos in the watch page sidebar
• Infinite scroll support — new cards are caught as you scroll down
• Explosion effect — every hidden card blows up with a particle animation
• On/off toggle in the popup to temporarily disable the filter

How it works

YouTube PromoBlast uses two complementary detection methods:

1. API interception — intercepts YouTube’s internal /youtubei/v1/next API responses and scans for promotion flags on each video card
2. Per-video fetch — fetches /watch?v=ID for each card and checks for the paid promotion disclosure (paidContentOverlay) in the player response

Detected promotional video IDs are cached locally so previously identified videos are hidden immediately on revisit.

Installation

Chrome Web Store

Coming soon

Manual install (development)

1. Clone or download this repository
2. Open Chrome and go to chrome://extensions
3. Enable Developer mode (top right)
4. Click Load unpacked and select the repository folder

Privacy

No data is ever sent to any external server. All processing happens entirely inside your browser. See privacy-policy.md for details.

License

MIT