Better Player is a Safari extension for YouTube. It blocks the ads, turns the page into a dark room with the video as the one lit thing in it, and on iPhone takes the video full screen in landscape even when the rotation lock is on.
NO ADS
Ad slots are hidden by a stylesheet before the page first paints, the ones YouTube injects into the feed afterwards are cleared, and a skippable ad in the player has Skip pressed for it as soon as the button appears. An unskippable ad still has to play — nothing here breaks YouTube's playback to get around one.
LANDSCAPE FULL SCREEN, EVEN LOCKED TO PORTRAIT
On iPhone, YouTube serves its phone layout, and Better Player gives you the playback bar — Picture in Picture, back and forward ten seconds, play, full screen — the ad blocking, and a full screen that works with the rotation lock on: tap full screen and the video turns sideways to fill the screen, with its own play, pause and skip buttons, double-tap to skip, and a drag along the edge to scrub. Turn the phone and the video follows.
FOCUS MODE
A dark layer covers the page and the video is lifted through it, centred in the window. Nothing is removed and nothing is rearranged — scroll down and the comments are exactly where YouTube put them. Press the close button in the corner and the lights come back up.
AMBIENT LIGHT
Better Player reads the frame on screen five times a second and paints its colours back out behind the video as a soft glow. A reef throws blue across the page; a field of mushrooms throws yellow-green. It drifts as the scene moves and stops when you pause. How far it spreads and how strong it is are yours to set.
SHORTS
A reel gets the same treatment: lit, with the guide dimmed and the column of buttons beside it out of the way. One switch keeps focus mode to watch pages instead.
CONTROLS WHERE YOUR HANDS ARE
Back and forward ten seconds, play and pause, previous and next, home, Picture in Picture, full screen — laid over the dimmed page, large enough to hit without aiming. Every button can be switched off; keep the two you use.
PRIVACY
Better Player is a Safari extension and nothing else. There is no backend it could send anything to, no analytics inside it, and no sign-in. Your settings stay on your device. Safari asks for permission on youtube.com because restyling that page is the whole job.
FREE
No in-app purchases, no subscription, no ads in the app. One app for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
ELEVEN LANGUAGES
English, Korean, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified, Traditional and Cantonese), German, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.
WHAT RUNS WHERE
Focus mode, ambient light and centring run on the watch page on iPhone, iPad and Mac alike. Shorts are built on YouTube's desktop site — that is what iPad and Mac load; on iPhone, ask Safari for the desktop site and they come with it.
Better Player for Youtube is also available in the Mac App Store.
Every now and then I’ll have to stop using this extension or switch browsers to the Brave browser, which is what I usually do because Apple or Google I don’t know who patches this ext. and fixes the ads. This reminds me of the brave browser struggle, but they’re much slower to fix it than Brave. TL;dr use the brave browser especially if you want background screen off listening on YT. This is just good for safari and not switching. Also as others have pointed out the controls on the bottom of the screen are usually good until they bug out or stop responding after a couple vids.
I reccomend, but major issue
24xix
The controls aren’t optional, so they take up space on the screen and block you from commenting and pressing stuff sometimes because it’s in the way!! Additionally, there’s no way to automatically have PiP on, so you have to enable it every single time you watch a video. Two small changes and this would be the best extension to ever grace safari mobile
the best extension for safari
hciuyui
super easy to install and free of glitches always working right on my 2013 MBP. thanks developer and please send me updates when avail, thanks!
Developer Response
Sounds great! Thanks for the comments!
A few problems
The long con 2002
The video sometimes becomes part of the background layer and doesn't respond, though fixes once I reload the page, but it's still pretty annoying, please fix.
• Better Player is easier to find in App Store search.
• Bug fixes.
Version 1.5.5
The developer, Jasmine Studios, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
Seller
Minwoo Lee
Size
91.7 MB
Category
Entertainment
Compatibility
Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 16.0 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 13.0 or later.
Apple Vision Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
Languages
English and 9 more
English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese
