The Manual: help with using Options

Video tab

Layout tab

Sites tab

Settings tab

License tab

Help tab

Supported configurations: some notes about supported browsers and limitations

Video issues: video performance lacking?

Display issues: video not displaying correctly?

MP3 & Conversions: it is not going to happen

Miscellaneous: odds and ends

Installing & updating: how to install, uninstall, and update the Options extension

Chrome: browser specific notes

Firefox: browser specific notes

Opera: browser specific notes

To get to the settings you can use any of the following methods:

• Select the page-action menu > Options... button.

• In Google Chrome, go to the menu, select the “More Tools” or “Tools” menu, select the “Extensions” menu item, find your version of Options, and select the “Options” link.

• In Mozilla Firefox, go to the menu, select the “Add-ons” menu, select the “Extensions” tab, find SPOI Options, select the “Preferences” button, and select the “Show Options...” button.

• In Opera macOS, go to the “View” menu, select the “Show Extensions” menu option, find “SPOI Options”, and select the “Options” button.

• In Opera Windows, go to the “Opera” menu, select the “Extensions” menu option, select the “Extensions manager” menu option, find “SPOI Options”, and select the “Options” button.

To see some of these options you must select the Advanced settings... link or the ` key in options.

Set how big you want the video to appear on the screen. Available options are 320x240, 640x360, 853x480, 720x540, 1280x720, 1920x1080, 2560x1440, 2880x1620, 3200x1800, 3840x2160, 7680x4320.

Setting this option to Default will leave the viewing size up to the webpage.

Setting this option to Window will expand the video to the size of the window. Selecting the Win option from the page action popup-menu repeatedly will zoom in on the video. The zoom effect can be unflattering and will cut off the sides of the video and the player controls. Repeat clicks on the Win button will eventually return the video to the size of the window. You can think of this zoom as the double-tap on a video in iOS. But with more levels of double zooming taps.

When selecting the option to Keep the viewing size the same as the viewing quality, the Viewing size option is disabled. This is because the viewing size is controlled by the selected viewing quality.

Set the desired YouTube video resolution. If the requested resolution is not available, the next available lower-resolution version will be used. Some videos with pre-video ads are known to disable the ability to set the resolution. If you have the Hide in-video ads option enabled this should not be an issue.

Setting this option to Default will leave the viewing quality up to the webpage.

There is/was no official YouTube API for setting HTML5 quality, so Options work-arounds may break depending on the day of the week.

Some YouTube cookies have been known to break this option.

Hide in-video ads will do its best to hide in-video and pre-roll ads. Sometimes we can not prevent all video ads.

Hide annotations will hide annotations if the video has them.

Hide closed-captions will hide closed captions if the video has them.

Blocking ads can also prevent playlist functionality when viewing fullscreen Flash YouTube videos. We can not block ads and have playlist magic.

We try and keep things as simple as possible. If you want to tweak the rest of these settings, you should definitely toggle the Advanced settings button.

This button appears in the upper-right of the Options setting window.

Selecting this button again will return you to the simplified interface.

Keep track of the last viewing size and use that for the next video.

This option will ignore the “Viewing size” option if a custom size has been saved while using the Scroll-wheel changes the viewing size option, keyboard, or page action menu.

Note: this option only works on youtube.com.

This option does its best to stop the YouTube video as close to 0:00 as possible. Sometimes a few frames sneak out. This usually happens because of network, CPU, or browser lag.

This option can depend on the disabling in-video ads. This is because a pre-roll video may force the desired video to start playing. If the pre-roll video is not there then the desired video can be paused.

The Auto-play options will not pause live feeds.

Sometimes you can not pause a movie.

Do not modify play settings will do nothing to the video. It will play exactly how the page intended.

Disable auto-play will pause the video as quickly as it can.

Disable auto-play except when in a playlist will not pause the video if it is apart of a playlist. If it is not part of a playlist it will pause the video as quickly as it can.

If a YouTube video has the start time reference in the URL (this includes: #at=, #t=, &t=), this option will start playing the video immediately at the specified start time and will ignore the Disable auto-play and Disable auto-buffering settings.

Set the default audio volume for YouTube videos.

Setting the option to Set by player rolls the dice and lets you try and set the volume using the YouTube player.

Keyboard controls only works for videos on youtube.com.

Selecting this option will loop/repeat all YouTube videos.

You may want to leave this option disabled and use the Loop: On and Off from the popup-menu for videos viewed on www.youtube.com for videos that are not in a playlist.

Videos on youtube.com will show a next to the video title if the video is in loop/repeat mode.

Options will now respond to an end= argument in the YouTube URL. If it finds an end time, it will stop playing the video at that time. If will stop playing the video only once per page-load. The URL end time format can be in the 0h0m0s, 0m0s, or 0s format or a total seconds format, eg: 181s (which would be 3 minutes 1 seconds).

Selecting this option will also modify the YouTube share link interface to have a start and end time. If you share the created link with someone that also has Options installed, YouTube will stop playing the video when it gets to the designated time. In other words, you can use this option to only play a bit of a video, eg: 0:06-1:18.

This option also works with the Loop functionality. If you want to play only a specific part of a video over and over and over again, set the start time (or not), set the end time, and select Loop: On from the page-action menu.

You can use the arrow-up and arrow-down keys to modify the start and end times. You can also Option/Alt-click the start and end time boxes to go to that time.

Note: unless you are looping, Options will only stop the video once. If you rewind the video after it has stopped, it will not stop again. If you forward past the designated stop time, Options will no longer stop the video. After playing or stopping or forwarding or rewinding, and you would like to only play the designated clip, you should refresh the page.

Note: Enabling this option will also hide the social media share buttons on YouTube. You can use your ultra-fancy copy and paste skills to paste the URL yourself, wherever you want.

Some people have performance issues when their Chrome browser play VP9 HTML5 formatted YouTube videos. So they can disable it and force H-264/5 HTML5 videos.

Set the default playback speed for YouTube HTML5 videos.

Since there is no official YouTube API for setting playback speed, this option may not work depending on the day of the week.

Wadsworth was the first person to point out that the beginning of most videos are largely worthless. Options lets you start playing a video at a specific time. We also find outros equally as annoying as intros, so we also let you stop the video early.

YouTube controls will be completely hidden until you mouse over the video to show the controls again.

YouTube controls will be completely hidden.

Some people don't like the YouTube player controls. They like the controls that each browser manufacturer chose to implement HTML5 media controls for each operating system instead. Now you can appreciate the hard work (or lack thereof).

When native controls are applied to embedded YouTube videos the play video on youtube.com button is removed. To open the video on youtube.com, double-click on the video.

Light, dark, or as the page intended?

You can use your mouse scroll-wheel by placing it over the video to do any of the following:

Do not modify the mouse scroll-wheel will do nothing to the video.

Scroll-wheel changes the viewing size will re-size the video. Alt-scroll-wheel to re-size the video even faster and Shift-scroll-wheel to change the video volume.

Scroll-wheel changes the video volume will change the video volume. Alt-scroll-wheel to change the volume slower, Shift-scroll-wheel to change the volume faster.

If the Keep the viewing size the same as the viewing quality option is enabled, this will also change the video quality.

Re-sized videos will maintain their 16x9 (1.78:1) ratio until they get to 320x240. At that size they will turn into 4x3 (1.33:1).

Scroll-wheel changes the video playback speed will attempt to change the playback speed of the HTML5 video. Alt-scroll-wheel and Shift-scroll-wheel to change the speed in more granular increments. Click using the scroll-wheel to set the speed to normal.

Scroll-wheel forwards or rewinds the video will attempt to fast-forward or fast-rewind the video in 5 second increments. Alt-scroll-wheel to try it in 15 second increments.

We have found that the performance of this feature can be a bit inconsistent.

All mouse options do not work in fullscreen mode.

To see these options you must select the Advanced settings link or tap the ` key in options.

Hide the header, YouTube guide, title, description, comments, video suggestions, footer, playlist, and matte the background.

Hide the site logo and usually the search bar. Usually the very top of the page.

Hide the YouTube guide to the left of (or above) the video.

Hide the search video field.

Hide the playlist.

Hide the video title-type areas.

Hide the various buttons that do all the sharing and socializing. The ones that are not necessary to basic functionality.

These buttons include: Subscribe, author videos, Like, Dislike, Add to (Favorites/Watch Later), Share, Flag, Views, Statistics, and all the video editing buttons.

Hide the video description.

Hide user comment areas.

The Hide branding and simplify layout will hide commenter avatars.

Hide user chat areas.

Hide the areas that contain other suggested videos.

Hide the bottom of the page. This usually contains copyright information and terms of use links.

This option will remove suggested videos at the end of YouTube videos and various page ads.

Depending on the version of the YouTube page you get, it will either limit the height of the comments, hide avatars, and hide the in-video suggested videos section -OR- it will create tab buttons below the video to show and hide things like comments and video suggestions.

Hide more will hide even more parts of the already hidden parts.

Changes the favicon (page icon) to reflect the status of YouTube and Vimeo videos. Playing, paused, stopped, or buffering.

This option will also remove the Play symbol that YouTube places in the window title.

This option is not available in Firefox due to browswer bugs or browser design choices.

Saves you from having to click on that pesky Show more button.

Does away with all those left and right arrows on YouTube and other video pages. Shows you all the videos those carousels would have shown you.

Scroll the initial page-load so that the video is up against the top of the window. You may want to use the Hide header option instead.

Adds a small widget to the YouTube video title, e.g.:

Real Genius by M. Night Shyamalan: Trailer Recut

Clicking on the widget will pop the video out into its own window. The popout video should retain the same size and resolution. If the video was playing, the original is paused and the popout version should start at the exact same spot.

Shift-clicking on the popout widget will open the video in a tiny window. Some people find this helpful when only listening to the audio.

Skip the Channel and User landing page and go directly to the videos page.

Remove all suggested videos from the home page.

Remove all suggested shorts-style videos from suggestions, search results, and other various pages.

Play all videos in the standard 16:9 / 1.78 / HD aspect ratio, creating black bars when necessary.

If a YouTube video has chapters, then add a chapter overlay when mousing over the video. Forward and back overlay buttons will take you to the next or the previous chapter. Depending on the size if your window, you will see the buttons for the chapters in the video controls, at the bottom of the video, or centered in the middle of the window, between the forward and back buttons. You can click on these chapter buttons to go to those chapters.

Sort order change the sort order of the suggested videos by Title, Author name, Views, Likes, Dislikes.

Reverse sort order reverse the above sort order. Because.

Change the page font to be Atkinson Hyperlegible, Helvetica, Lucida Grande, Open Sans, or Roboto, or San Francisco.

Darker page colours will make the page text harder to read.

This changes the background color to the Mood color (selected above).

Real Genius by M. Night Shyamalan: Trailer Recut

An alternative to matting, this dims everything on the page that is not the video. Or tries really hard to.

Real Genius by M. Night Shyamalan: Trailer Recut

Show the download link(s) for all available versions of the video. If you do not see a type or resolution or format you want, you can convert it yourself using free tools or contact the author.

If download links are available they will appear immediately under the video:

If you do not see download links it is because you have this option disabled or media could not be found to create links for. Depending on the kind of YouTube page you get and if you have Hide branding and simplify layout enabled, you may need to click on the “Media” tab under the video.

Download links are only created on host / parent sites and are not available for embedded videos.

You can drag the sort order of the media types to re-arrange how the download links will appear under the video.

If you select the Viewing quality option the save filename will include the resolution, e.g.: “Dance Commander-720p.mp4”.

If you select the Video owner option the filename will include the Author of the video, e.g.: “Electric Six - Dance Commander.mp4”.

If you select the Upload date option the filename will include the date the video was uploaded, e.g.: “Dance Commander - Sept 18 2006.mp4”. You can also change the date format to be Year-Month-Day, Year-Day-Month, Month-Day-Year, or Day-Month-Year.

You can drag the sort order of the filename parts to re-arrange the order of the filename.

Depending on the browser and the site, you may have to right-click on the link to save a video. If you do not see a link, then you can not download it.

Some videos are not downloadable.

All download links are direct. They never use a proxy server.

If you are not seeing download links or the download links are not working, you can try logging out of YouTube and/or purging the browser cache and all cookies.

If you select the Include playlist and any video suggestions option links will also appear in YouTube playlists, and on Home, Channel, User, and search pages. This functionality is dependent on pages enabled in the Sites tab.

This feature is not available for the Google Chrome Web Store version of Options. The Google Chrome Web Store Developer Agreement prevents the Google Web Store from hosting this feature.

We shouldn’t have to say this, but in case we do: don’t use this option to steal. That is not what this option is for.

This will try and create download links for all other videos mentioned anywhere else on the page. This may include video suggestions, playlists, or other videos mentioned in video descriptions.

If the video you are watching has a playlist associated with it, look for the playlist download button . This will try and make your browser download the same file format for all videos in the playlist. Please note that all videos may not have the same media formats, so Options does some guessing.

YouTube usually plays seperate video and audio files together when you watch a video. So if you feel like muxing your own audio and video together, you can show these odd files.

Ever wonder what other YouTube videos the author has uploaded? This option ads a RSS feed reference to the page source code so a RSS feed catcher might stumble across it.

Do not add RSS links to page and source headers will not create any RSS links.

Add RSS links to page source will create a generic link that can be picked up by extensions like “RSS Subscription Extension (by Google)”, if you have it configured correctly:

https://feedly.com/i/subscription/feed/%s

https://inoreader.com/?add_feed=%s

https://theoldreader.com/feeds/subscribe?url=%s

Add RSS link to page source and links for feedly creates a link to use with feedly up top in the header by the search box.

Add RSS link to page source and links for InoReader creates a link to use with InoReader up top in the header by the search box.

Add RSS link to page source and links for The Old Reader creates a link to use with The Old Reader up top in the header by the search box.

You will also find links on Twitter and Instagram pages in a similar position at the top of the page or scattered around, depending on the type of page you are viewing.

Someone complained that they needed the ability to hide the painfully handy popup-menu. This menu lets you show and hide things, change video size, change video playback speed, turn looping On and Off, Reverse the playlist, and turn page filtering On and Off or load the page Once without any modifications to the options.

This option is not available in Opera because the extensions panel includes this feature.

This option is not available in Firefox, but you can remove it entirely by customizing the toolbar (see below).

To see these options you must select the Advanced settings link or tapping the ` key in options.

Select which sites you would like Options to modify.

Do as much as we can to apply all the settings above to any embedded videos we come across.

Replace embedded videos with a thumbnail and a big red play button. When you click the replacement button the video will open the video on www.youtube.com rather than playing it on the current page in a tiny little box.

Change various options to conserve bandwidth. Additional options to block fonts, images, and extra page scripts. Does this by preventing the data from even reaching your browser.

To see these options you must select the Advanced settings link or tap the ` key in options.

The Click to show or edit current active settings field contains all of your current Options settings.

There are three available profile slots for storing your options. You can rename them by selecting the profile names.

Select the Use these settings button/link to start using the options stored in that profile.

Select the Save active settings button/link to save your current options into that profile.

The Copy or edit field contains all your options for that profile. You can copy and paste these into an email or a file or into an email, file, or into another profile.

The Settings synchronization option will securely sync all your Options setting between browsers using your subscription email address and a encryption key. You can make the encryption key whatever text you want (even tho there is nothing important in your settings, we still suggest making it something only you would know). To use this option the encryption key and the subscription email address must be exactly the same on all browsers. Your settings are encrypted using CryptoJS AES on your machine before sending to them to the SPOI sync server. The SPOI server will only ever hold an encrypted copy of your settings. There will be no way to decrypt or view your settings without the encryption key. If the SPOI sync server is ever compromised, the attacker will not be able to decrypt your settings without the encryption key.

Select Upload settings to server to upload your settings immediately to the SPOI sync server. Otherwise, your browser will check if it needs to send your settings several times per hour.

Select Get settings from server to download your settings immediately from the SPOI sync server. Otherwise, your browser will verify it has the most current settings several times per hour.

The Reset current active settings to Options defaults button will reset all your active options to our factory default options. It will not modify any of your profile settings.

Settings will sync between all supported browsers (ie, Chrome to Opera to Firefox and back again).

Enter in your case-sensitive email address that you used to register with.

If you have not subscribed yet, you can do so here, or apply for a trial license.

Login to your PayPal account or select credit or debit card options. After your transaction has completed you can enter the email address you used on the subscription page on in the License tab. If the subscription process completed successfully, you should be able to start using Options immediately. Otherwise, you can explore the options.

Brings you here.

Provides you with a link to submit a trouble ticket. If the link does not work, our next preferred method for sending an email to support. Click on the But what if the site is not working? link. It includes all your current settings that we will need for troubleshooting. You get to edit it before sending, but we ask that you do not modify or remove any of the settings.

We only support official release versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. There are too many derivative versions of Chrome and Firefox for us to keep track of and all of them have different levels of compatibility. If you choose to use a non-official release you do so at your own risk. Derivative versions include Chromium and Iron.

We always encourage you to view all videos on their original hosted site. This is why we created the Click to play embedded YouTube videos on YouTube option.

Depending on the page, embedded YouTube and Vimeo videos can also be modified.

When used with YouTube this extension only has full functionality on www.youtube.com/watch/ videos. There is limited functionality on “Channel”, “Feed”, “Home”, “Search”, and “User” pages.

Extensions or software with overlapping functionality or Flash-blocking abilities will and can prevent Options from working correctly.

Options supports Adobe Flash and HTML5 versions.

spoi.com, the Google Chrome Web Store, Apple Extensions Gallery, and the Opera add-ons repository are the only sites that distribute our software. Options or any other spoi software installed from anywhere else should be removed immediately.

We do not support installations that have been extracted or decompressed. They violate our License Agreement.

If the YouTube buffer bar is not filling in all the way it is because YouTube wants it to be like that. You may have some success getting around this by enabling the Disable DASH option (but keep in mind that doing this will break other things).

Most stability issues are caused by Adobe Flash and the browser. Please verify you are using the most recent build of your browser, Flash, and your Operating System is up to date on patches.

If you are not seeing certain YouTube resolutions that you feel should exist, most likely YouTube has given you a cookie that is blocking/preventing those resolutions or you have the Disable DASH option enabled.

Depending on the version of the YouTube player and if you have your Viewing quality set to 720 or greater and you try and advance to un-buffered parts of the video you may be forced to start the video from the beginning. This could be caused by YouTube’s “sliced bread” buffering technology (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP). This is not a problem with Options. You may be able to get around this problem by enabling the Disable DASH option.

Things on the page may not display correctly if you are zoomed in or out. We suggest you view the page at Actual size / 100%. This includes the Options settings page. If you would like you zoom in on the settings page, you can use the - / + keys without using the control / command / option key modifier.

Having YouTube video size scaling issues? Try un-checking the Hardware acceleration for Flash plugin option. This can also be caused by using YouTube in HTML5 mode.

Options does not do any audio or video encoding or re-encoding. If you do not see the resolution or format you want, please contact the video author and request that they add the additional resolution(s).

We are not going to host a conversion server for legal, ethical, and financial reasons. You can convert the downloaded media to whatever you want using free audio utilities.

You can use this menu to show or hide the header, title, YouTube guide, download link(s), description, comments, video suggestions, footer, playlist, and matte the background on-the-fly.

You can also change the display size of the video, turn YouTube looping On or Off, Reverse playlist, or effectively disable Options by turning the Filtering On or Off or Once for one page-load only.

And it can take you to the Options... and Help.

In Google Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, the popup-menu is located in the URL bar. It will look like if the filtering has been turned off using this menu or you do not have a valid license.

Browsers have the option to customize the page action menu on YouTube pages in the following ways:

Show hide/show buttons will show the interface for hiding or showing page elements.

Show size buttons will show buttons to allow you to change the viewing size of the video.

Show mood buttons will show buttons to allow you to turn the page mood on or off.

Show popout buttons will show the buttons that allow you to pop out the main video or create popout links for all suggested videos.

Show loop/playlist buttons will show the buttons that enable you to turn looping on or off, or reverse the playlist.

Show filter buttons will show buttons that allow you turn page filtering on or off or skip one page-load.

Pick your browser:

Chrome

Firefox

Opera

Note: Minimum requirement is Chrome version 26.

Note: The Chrome version requires that you Allow local data to be set (recommended). chrome://settings/content

Note: For security reasons Google has decided that as of May 2015 all versions of the Chrome browser cannot install extensions from outside the Google Web Store, so there is no more “Full version” of Options for Chrome. You can read more about it here.

If you absolutely must download media with the Chrome browser, we have some unsupported tutorials for macOS and Windows.  Please read them entirely to understand what is required before attempting.

Note: When installing the Google Chrome version of this extension it says “This extension can access: Your browsing history, Your data on all websites”. This is the default warning for any extension that needs content script access to all websites. This access is needed for detecting embedded videos on third-party pages. For the paranoid: nothing is being done with your data.

If this does not work for you or you are unable to drag the Options_1.8.XXX.crx download file on to the “Extensions” window/tab we suggest waiting for the next release of the browser. Or contact Google for support.

Install: While using Google Chrome, select “Install” from the Google Chrome Web Store page.

Uninstall: While using Google Chrome, go to the menu, select the “More Tools” or “Tools” menu, select the “Extensions” menu item. Find your version of “Options” and select the button.

Update: Like most things Google, this extension will update automatically when it detects a version update. If you absolutely must check for an update, while using Google Chrome, go to the menu, select the “More Tools” or “Tools” menu, select the “Extensions” menu item. Click on the “Developer mode” check-box or the “+” button. Click on the “Update extensions now” button. If Chrome finds an update, it will be downloaded automatically.

Note: Minimum requirement is Firefox 49+.

Install: While using Mozilla Firefox, select DOWNLOAD > FIREFOX from the main page.

After you see something similar to this:

you must:

select the “Install Now” button.

Uninstall: While using Mozilla Firefox, go to the menu, select the “Add-ons” menu, select the “Extension” tab. Find “SPOI Options” and select the “Remove” button.

Update: This extension should update automatically when it detects a version update. If you absolutely must check for an update, while using Mozilla Firefox, go to the menu, select the “Add-ons” menu, select the “Extension” tab. Select the Sprocket menu > Check for Updates.

Note: Minimum requirement is Opera 15+.

Install: While using Opera, select “Install” from the Opera add-ons page.

macOS Uninstall: View > Show Extensions > SPOI Options > Disable or select the “X” (Remove from Opera) button.

Windows Uninstall: Opera > Extensions > SPOI Options > Disable or select the “X” (Remove from Opera) button.

macOS Update: View > Show Extensions. Select the “Developer Mode” button. Select the “Update Extensions Now” button.

Windows Update: Opera > View > Extensions. Select the “Developer Mode” button. Select the “Update Extensions Now” button.