YouTube has changed the size and quantity of thumbnails on the home page, and frankly, it’s too much. The thumbnails are enormous because the default is now only three rows, which are really in your face. This appears to have been incremental because a couple of years ago, it had changed from six rows to four. As far as I remember, the default used to be six or eight, but YouTube’s reasoning is that the larger thumbnails and hence, fewer rows, mean that viewers stay longer. This is not the first time I’ve ranted about YouTube taking UI control away from us because I’ve already written about the Topical Context Panel and its nasty habit of Translating Original Video Titles. In all three of these cases, there’s no built-in option to take control, so clever programmers have developed extensions to make the changes we want, which frankly, is bizarre.
How To Take Control Of Your YouTube Home Page
I use YouTube every single day, especially since I subscribe to Premium with no ads, and since I pay for the service, I reckon that I deserve more control over the UI, as does everyone else. In order to choose how many ranks I would like to see, I had to add the YouTube Row Fixer extension, which, by extension, reduces the thumbnail sizes when increasing the number of ranks. I changed the number of ranks to six, which is much more acceptable and easier on the eyes.
If you’re feeling really mischievous, you can go up to a maximum of 15 ranks, but your eyesight would need to be 20/20!
I use the Opera browser, but you will need to check whether this extension is available for the browser that you use. From my research, YouTube Row Fixer is available for most browsers, and a similar extension is available for Apple Safari users, known as YT Thumbnails Resizer.
In YT Row Fixer, I also appreciate the option to hide Shorts, which I find nauseating at best. You can also hide channel profiles, show full video titles, and auto-adjust videos per row. I’m very impressed with this extension, but disappointed that, yet again, YouTube has forced me to turn to an extension to get around one of its many ridiculous design decisions which are forced upon us.
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