How it works

DeArrow takes inspiration from my other project, SponsorBlock, moving on to use the community to fix the way all videos are presented in your feed.

The browser extension first fetches data from the backend about submitted titles and thumbnails. If one is found, it replaces the branding locally.

All thumbnails are just timestamps in a video, so they need to be generated. There are two options to generate them. One is to use the thumbnail generation service , and another is to generate it locally. It tries both and uses the fastest one. The thumbnail generation service will cache thumbnails for future requests, making it return instantly for the next user. Local thumbnail generation is done by taking a screenshot of an HTML video element using and drawing that to a canvas.

If no thumbnails or titles are submitted, it switches to the configurable fallback options. Titles will be formatted according to user preference (title or sentence cases). Thumbnails, by default, are generated at a random timestamp that is not in a SponsorBlock segment.

Lastly, it adds a "show original" button if anything was changed, allowing you to peek at the original title and thumbnail when you want.

When was this started

DeArrow was first released to the public on June 10th 2023.