ReelControl
Productivity
browser extension for video controls
SHOW HN2025
ReelControl
A Chrome extension to give you back control over short-form videos
chromewebstore.google.com#seek bar#short-form video#instagram reels#youtube shorts#progress bar
How HN took it
12 positive, 13 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 4 critical, out of 30 comments about the project. Thread score +0.23.
Idea: 6 for, 2 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Useful, saves a lot of time on short videos and the length is visible
From 3 comments
The worst thing is that you don't know if a video is 15 seconds or 3 minutes. This is great. Thank you!
neves on HNI haven't tried this out but if it works it's one the biggest bang for the buck I've seen on HN. Thanks!
megadata on HNThanks for this. I've thought about building this exact thing ever since this vicious trend began.
robgibbons on HN
Bookmarklets and scripts are hard to share, an extension is easier
From 1 comment
I've tried to send bookmarklets to my family and they never "get" them. An extension like this is perfect. Thanks for your work!
xeromal on HN
Objections
Extension adds security and update risk
From 1 comment
It's also a security risk though, as in someone could take it over and push a bad update at any time... I have a few extensions installed but I'm terrified of adding more, even…
rendaw on HN
Progress bar may let people skip content, which hurts creators and advertisers
From 1 comment
Adding a progress bar back might cause people to just skip to the part they want to see instead of watching the whole thing again though, and I'm worried that might not be in the…
umvi on HN
Requests
Firefox release
From 2 comments
That looks pretty useful. A Firefox release would be most appreciated.
Zak on HNThanks for releasing it! Whats the chance of this getting shipped to Firefox users? A future improvement might be to add the ability to change the playback speed :)
ensignavenger on HN
Playback speed control
From 2 comments
Thanks for releasing it! Whats the chance of this getting shipped to Firefox users? A future improvement might be to add the ability to change the playback speed :)
ensignavenger on HNAnd perhaps allow 3x playback speed. It's too fast for me to understand speech on most videos but not all. But some videos are so long winded that it can be tremendously helpful.
megadata on HN
Remember muted audio state across videos
From 1 comment
Instant download. Works great. Perhaps on Instagram you can make it save the audio level when the video is muted? If I mute a video then scroll to the next one, the audio still…
65 on HN
Questions
Does it work on Instagram and YouTube Shorts, and is there a license
From 1 comment
Thanks for sharing! Also, would you mind adding a license to your gh repo?
joshdavham on HN
Alternatives named
Show Video Controls by Default extension
From 1 comment
Nice. Does this do more than the "Show Video Controls by Default" extension?…
xnx on HN
Remove YouTube Shorts extension
From 1 comment
Been using this extension to turn shorts back into regular videos for years: https://github.com/raven0230/Remove-Youtube-Shorts That way not only do you get the seek/pause…
ranger_danger on HN
Video Scrubber for Instagram and Video Controls for TikTok
From 1 comment
I've made these for TikTok/Instagram: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/video-scrubber-for-instag/apondjajmejlodhkaenofcicoiiekghf…
haberdasher on HN
Bookmarklet and Greasemonkey video fixer scripts
From 2 comments
I have a simple bookmarklet does does something similar: ``` javascript:(function(){document.querySelectorAll("video").forEach(((e,o)=>{console.log(`VideoFixer: Processing…
varenc on HNI turned this into a greasemonkey script: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/531780-universal-video-fixer/code That can be configured to run automatically on every site, and it…
varenc on HN