About DeArrow
DeArrow is the clickbait filter from the creator of SponsorBlock. Titles in capital letters, arrows, shocked faces and vague teasers are replaced with something closer to what the video contains. The project says its goal is accurate titles and less sensationalism.
It works the same way SponsorBlock does. Users submit alternative titles, and thumbnails that are screenshots from a chosen timestamp, and others vote. Where nobody has submitted anything, DeArrow applies your chosen fallback: it can reformat the original title and use a frame from a random point in the video that is not a sponsor segment, or it can keep the original thumbnail. A Show original button lets you check what was changed.
The extension is free to use. Its payment page asks for a one-time $1 licence key to fund development, and a button lets you carry on without paying. Safari runs as a separate paid app. It has fewer users than SponsorBlock, so some videos have no submissions and fall back to the automatic formatting. If you want a calmer home page, this is the tool for it, and SponsorBlock pairs well.
Pros and cons
- Crowdsourced titles and thumbnails, voted on by users
- Falls back to reformatted titles and a plain video frame
- Open source, from the SponsorBlock developer
- One-click Show original button
- Asks for a $1 licence key, though you can skip it
- Fewer users than the other two crowdsourced tools
- Safari version is a separate paid app
Permissions
It needs access to YouTube pages to swap titles and thumbnails, and to the DeArrow servers for submissions and cached thumbnails. The Firefox build also lists googlevideo.com, which fits how it generates thumbnails from video frames.
