#userscripts are super easy to use

[inkandarsenic]

The user scripts will also work on iOS!! There are apps for that! I use Userscripts because it’s free, but there a bunch of them, and it becomes an extension on Safari like any adblocker or Honey!

I personally have three userscripts right now, one to add a mark for later button to the bottom of fics as I’m searching

One to ad a marked for later and bookmarked fics button to the search bar to make it easier to get to that list

One to show me which fics I’ve seen, which I’ve kudos’d, which ones I’ve bookmarked, and also mark fics I don’t want to see as skipped.

All seen fics have a grey bar on the left, Kudos’d fics have a little red Ao3 symbol with hearts and bookmarked fics have a grey bar with diagonal lines along the right. I can mark fics as seen or skipped as I scroll and skipped fics can be set as collapsed

a placeholder

Or completely hidden

The settings for that are under ‘Seen Works’ on the search bar

I had one to add a floating comment box so I could comment as I read, but for whatever reason it stopped working with all the others ones I have? Or maybe it just didn’t work with my site skin (I have a site skin to shorten long tag fields and turn the “you have already left kudos” message green)

Go forth and have fun customizing your AO3 friends!

Disclaimer: none of these answers are official, and may not work for your particular use case. If there is a specific feature that an unofficial app had that you don't know how to replicate on the AO3, let me know in the notes and we might can crowdsource a solution.

A lot of people used the Archive Reader app to access stories on Archive of Our Own, and have been upset that the app is now charging to read longer than an hour a day. AO3 (and its parent organization, the OTW) has made it extremely clear in recent days that this app is unofficial and that there *is* no official app. They encourage people to use the website.

However, there are MANY reasons you might want an app, and in a bunch of those cases, there are ways to do those things without having to provide your login information to a random person running an app. Here is a round-up of solutions to the most common reasons I've seen people give for wanting an app instead of the plain AO3 website.

These solutions are based on the following assumptions:

You know what Archive of Our Own is

You often or primarily access it through a mobile device running iOS or Android

You understand what a browser is

You understand what a browser bookmark is

You understand what a site skin is

I need a widget on my phone's homescreen, not just a browser bookmark.

You can do this with any website, not just AO3! Instructions here: https://www.howtogeek.com/196087/how-to-add-websites-to-the-home-screen-on-any-smartphone-or-tablet/

I need Dark Mode.

AO3 has a default site skin for Dark Mode, it's just called Reversi. Find it here, or at the bottom of any page on the website. https://archiveofourown.org/skins/929/

I need to be able to read stories when I don't have internet.

Every work on the AO3 has a download button, so you can click on that and download the story for offline reading in the ereader app of your choice. More info on how to do that is in the AO3 FAQs: https://archiveofourown.org/faq/downloading-fanworks?language_id=en#accesslater

I need to be able to change the text size of the website itself.

If you have an AO3 account (and you should!!) you can do this with a personalized site skin! There is a simple tutorial here: https://www.tumblr.com/ao3skin/667284237718798336/i-have-a-request-if-you-dont-mind-could-you

I need to be able to change the text size in downloaded stories.

My personal recommendation: Don't download in PDF format. All the other formats you can download in can scale the text size up and down, assuming you open the work in the correct app. For me, I download works in EPUB format and read them on the built-in Books app on my iPhone. I hear good things about Moon Reader on Android as well.

I need to be able to replace Y/N in fics with an actual name.

ElectricAlice has a bookmarklet for that here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34796935

I need to be able to save specific tags and not have to search them up every time.

If you have an AO3 account (which you definitely should) then you can favorite up to 20 tags which will appear on the landing page. The AO3 FAQ explains how that works: https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tags?language_id=en#favtag

I need to be able to save specific filters and be able to apply them to any tag.

Reisling's beautiful bookmarklet has you covered: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33825019

I need to be able to permanently hide certain tags.

The best option is adding this to your site skin. (Must be logged in.) Instructions here: https://www.tumblr.com/ao3css/719667033634160640/how-to-permanently-filter-out-certain-tags-on-ao3

I also hear things about the AO3 Enhancements extension (just for Android/desktop, sorry iOS folks): https://www.tumblr.com/emotionalsupportrats/686787582579851265/browser-extension-everyone-on-ao3-should-know

I need it to save my place on the page and not reload.

This is really mostly a browser error--Firefox on iOS does this to me A LOT. Your best bet is to download the work and read it in an ereader app. A lot of people also will make an ao3 bookmark and write in the notes section which part they were at, but that assumes you aren't falling asleep while reading. (Which is the main reason I have this issue, lol.) For more info on bookmarks, see the FAQ: https://archiveofourown.org/faq/bookmarks?language_id=en#whatisbookmark

I need it to keep track of which stories I've already read/opened/kudos'd.

If you have an account (which you should) then the "My History" page keeps track of every fic you've ever clicked on. No, it isn't searchable or sortable, but it does exist. For fics you've kudos'd, I have yet to find a solution for iOS. For desktop or Android, you can use this excellent userscript: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/5835-ao3-kudosed-and-seen-history

I need an app because the website's search is terrible.

(I genuinely don't understand this one but I have seen it multiple times so on the list it goes!!) The search bar at the top of the screen is a keyword search. If you'd rather search within a specific field (like title or tag) then you'll want to click on the word "search" at the top of the screen and select Work Search or Tag Search. To search users, use People Search. To search Bookmarks, use Bookmark Search. (If this is you, please tell me what the heck you mean by "search is bad" and how an app helped with this.)

I need to be able to sort stories by date posted/number of bookmarks/alphabetical/etc.

You can do this using the filters sidebar. Pick a tag you want to filter on (like a fandom, character, or relationship) and then click on the "Filters" button. The sidebar will pop out and you can sort and filter on a boggling array of specifics. A good filtering guide: https://www.tumblr.com/saurons-pr-department/718665516093472768/if-there-is-something-you-dont-want-to-see-in

I need to be able to mark stories to read later.

AO3 has this feature built in! If you have an account (which you should) there is a "Mark for Later" option on every work.

I need to be able to listen to stories using text-to-speech.

Microsoft Edge web browser has a built in text to speech function. Supposedly it works on both iOS and Android, but I have not personally tested that. iOS also has a native accessibility feature in settings for text to speech that will work on the Books app, so I assume Android has a similar functionality.

I need an app because <other reason>.

The AO3 Unofficial Browser Tools FAQ might cover your use case: https://archiveofourown.org/faq/unofficial-browser-tools?language_id=en If not, give a shout and we'll see what other tumblr users suggest!

[lefae]

Do you know how many works your read this year?

💌 ao3 wrapped [reader edition] (accepting)

Pfft... Umm... So, small disclaimer: I'm a speed reader and tend to read mostly long fics, and due to memory issues will also reread earlier chapters of multichapter long fics to remember wtf was going on previously before reading the newest chapters (because I also tend to wait until there's at least a handful of chapters before getting caught up because otherwise I'll have to keep searching for fic immediately after just having picked one to read).

I have also been hyperfixated on Mass Effect (since introducing you to it, no less), so that's been the predominate fandom to the point that I've read almost everything in some of the tags unless it outright has stuff I won't read at all due to being NOPTs, squicks, and/or severe triggers. Like, I think there are only a handful of Nihlus/Shep fics I haven't read at all yet. And fyi, there are only 3 fics for Joker/Tali, which makes me sad and I kinda want to fix that if I can get the spoons to do so.

All of that was written mostly while I waited to get out of the AO3 frozen jail from trying to load through too many pages too quickly, so now that I can get a rough estimate based on my history, I've read close to 200 fics in 2023 - the majority of them long fics of 100k or more), and the majority of them this year being Mass Effect (including Andromeda) and/or Dragon Age, including various crossovers in some cases (I'm a sucker for a good crossover and/or AU, as you well know).

I read everything from complete fics to wips (including abandoned fics), so there's not much limiting what I'll read. The biggest thing is just staying away from the ships I don't care for, and the tropes I don't want to see, which AO3 makes super easy to avoid (especially since I also use userscripts for highlighting tags, so I have warnings highlighted as red to make them easier to find in long clusters of tags as necessary).

Lately, rarepair hell has been the most common theme I've found myself in, with some pairings having only single or double digits of fics, and most of those are really short (like 1000 words or less), so I'm always looking for the next long fic to dive into.

If I read more short fic, the number would easily be higher, but I actively sort by word count and start at the longest fics possible and work my way down through the pages. Given it only takes me a couple hours to read a 50k fic, and only about 2 nights to read a 200k fic, it's little wonder I seek them out first, unless I'm pressed for time or am having bad ADHD issues with attention span, then I might filter down to a smaller range for a bit.

[ellililunch-ao3-hacks]

Hi everyone! With ao3 trending for its birthday I just wanted to share some code I wrote to make your ao3 bookmarking experience super easy! My detailed Tumblr post about it is here: https://www.tumblr.com/ellililunch/723618493538418688/ao3-re-read-savior-userscript?source=share.

The gist of it is that it:

1. automatically adds the fic info (title, author, workID, and summary) to the bookmark notes while preserving any existing notes

2. adds word count tags or a "WIP" tag (and for wips will automatically add a "read up to chapter x" tag)

3. automatically sets all new bookmarks to default to being private as well

4. includes a "rekudos machine" that converts re-clicks of the kudos button into a random nice comment along the lines of "rekudos!"

5. duplicates the "subscribe" and "mark for later/as read" buttons at the end of the fic

It's a system I developed because of my rereading habits, and I just used it to add info to about 7000 bookmarks in under a week 😅.

Super helpful if you're tired of not knowing what that deleted fic was (and possibly finding it again with the workID url in a way back machine) or private collections "mystery works" 😡.

Happy reading!

[shamelesslymkp]

Hello & Welcome to Today’s Episode of MKP Recs Useful Shit!!

OK, so I recently started using some userscripts designed specifically for use on the ao3, and they have been life-changing, which sounds overly dramatic I know and probably is overly dramatic, but honestly they’ve made my fic-reading experience so much better and easier since I started using them!

So. First of all: 

In order to use any of these, you need to have a browser extension like Tampermonkey installed. Once you have a user scripts manager running in the background, you can easily install these userscripts from GreasyFork!

(MKP, I hear you saying. MKP, I know what a userscript is. I know how to install them. Get to the damn point already. SO! Without further ado.)

MKP’s Non-Comprehensive List of Awesome AO3 Userscripts

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

AO3 Pinboard Button & Pinboard Button Options

OK, so this is only essential if you actually have a Pinboard account, but! if you DO! ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL, HOLY SHIT, I think I’ve posted about this one before - this userscript takes Flamebyrd’s amazing amazing bookmark-AO3-fics-on-Pinboard-the-SMART-way bookmarklet and turns it into a button right on the site itself:

Like the bookmarklet, it requires some setup to use effectively - luckily, most users will be able to do their setup entirely through the provided GUI! I’m a bit of a ... special case, when it comes to bookmarking shit, so I ended up doing a lot of manual fucking with a) the javascript of the browser bookmarklet and b) the userscript configs in order to get the results I wanted. (Still haven’t figured out how to get the userscript to grab the fandom and author names and include them in the bookmark title along with the fic title, which works fine with the bookmarklet version, but that’s a minor complaint, really.)

AO3: Highlight Tags

I did not know I needed this but now that I have it I’m never going back, I have seen the light and it is glorious and color-coded!!

This script essentially will scan all tags visible on the loaded page and will highlight tags matching pre-defined terms with a pre-defined color. As far as I can tell there isn’t a limit on the number of tag keywords you can set up, and it lets you use wildcards, which is fantastic!

This one’s pretty tricky to get set up with anything beyond the most simplest of configs, ngl, but so. fucking. worth it.

See it in action here!

AO3: Kudosed & Seen History

OK, so if you’re like me and you a) read truly impressive and awe-inspiring amounts of fic on a regular basis and b) have the memory of a squirrel, you may find this fic incredibly useful! Allows you to quickly identify fics you’ve already read/enjoyed, either so you can avoid them and read something new, or so you can find comfortable re-reads that you already know you’ll like! This is a super powerful script, with a lot of options. Don’t be intimidated, though! The script author actually provided as part of the script a GUI method of modifying the configs! After installing the script, refresh your AO3 page and take a look at the top menu bar, where you’ll see a new tab entitled ‘Seen Works’. That drop-down menu will let you customize to your heart’s content!

Depending on how you configure this script, you can:

highlight visually works you’ve already left kudos on

hide works you’ve already left kudos on

highlight visually works you’ve already bookmarked* 

hide works you’ve already bookmarked

mark works as ‘seen’** 

highlight visually works you’ve already marked as seen

hide works you’ve already marked as seen

*The ‘bookmarked’ indicator is independent of the ‘kudosed’ indicator and the two indicators are visually distinct from each other, making it easy to tell if you’ve both kudosed and bookmarked a work, or only done one of the two. 

**This can be done manually on an individual basis at the fic level, manually en masse at a page level (marks all fics on the page as seen), and/or automatically when a fic is opened, if that option is selected.

See it in action here!

DEAD USEFUL, THAT 

AO3 Download Buttons

Adds download buttons to each work blurb on AO3's works index pages, letting you download fics on the go without needing to click into each one!

AO3 Clone Subscribe Button

Literally just duplicates the “Subscribe” button down at the very end of the fic, which tbh seems like a more logical place for it to be than at the top, but that’s why userscripts exist, right?

AO3 Tag Hider

Collapses the taglist of fics that are tagged with more than a pre-defined maximum number of tags. This can be a godsend when browsing, especially when browsing on mobile! Personally, I found the default cutoff far too extreme - I was missing out on a lot of the genre/mood/trope tags - but modifying the max is easy enough. 

CLICK HERE TO SEE IT IN ACTION!

AO3 Series Collapser

Collapses the listing of any fic marked as part of a series except if listed as the first in the series. Useful for those who like reading things in order and/or really hate sp0ilers.

AO3 Crossover Savior

Allows one to hide fics that are tagged with more than a pre-defined maximum number of distinct fandoms. This is different from the AO3 native ‘Exclude Crossovers’ option and can be used to filter out fics that are being used as a collection of miscellaneous ficlets across a wide variety of fandoms while still allowing actual crossovers to appear in the search results.

CLICK HERE TO SEE IT IN ACTION!

AO3 Relationship Savior

Allows one to hide fics that are tagged with more than a pre-defined maximum number of relationships. This can be used to filter out fics that are being used as a collection of miscellaneous ficlets across a wide variety of fandoms and fics that are over-tagged with background and secondary relationship tags. The lower the maximum, the more likely it is that you’ll be missing out on fics featuring your preferred pairing.

AO3: Links to Last Chapter and Entire Works

This userscript affects work index pages, adding links to both the entire work and the most recent chapter directly following the fic’s title. By default, the links will show up as “E” for entire work and “L” for latest chapter, but that can be easily changed by editing the userscript.

AO3: Links to First and Last Chapter

This userscript, on the other hand, affects the pages of individual works. When reading a chaptered fic, it adds links to the first chapter and to the most recent chapter in addition to the already existing previous and next buttons.

AO3: Links for Entire Works

If, like me, you default to always opening the entire work instead of screwing around with chapter buttons and indices, you may find this userscript helpful! When you view a chaptered fic in the Entire Work view, you still see the chapter headings showing up/interrupting the text at the beginning of each next chapter; clicking that chapter heading will redirect you to the page for that specific chapter and pull you out of the Entire Work view. This userscript adds little up/down arrow links following each chapter heading, allowing you to jump up to the beginning of the last chapter, or down to the beginning of the next one.

WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT LATENCY

AO3 Saved Filters

Gives one the ability to set pre-defined persistent filters on all search/index pages - filters can be saved as global or as fandom-specific. This obviously is awesome for excluding tags you’re always manually filtering out, but also has the perhaps-not-quite-as-obvious capability to set defaults for language and completion status. In order to default to always only seeing results in English, for example, you just need to add the filter words “language_id:1″ to the global filters field. 

Obviously a very useful and powerful tool! It does, however, at least in my experience, take a little longer to load than the page itself does, meaning the page will refresh again shortly after having fully loaded, which may or may not bother you. I found it was too jarring personally for me to use it on an everyday basis, but it really does work and it really is awesome.

(I’m afraid I don’t know the other language IDs off the top of my head, but the AO3: Display Tag ID userscript is a good tool for finding out - does just what it says on the tin, and displays the numerical string used in the backend to denotate the tag in question. Note that this only works on tags considered ‘canonical’!)

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Additional AO3 userscripts can be found on GreasyFork.

Bonus: Additional Scripts for Pinboard Users 

AKA When I Play Pin-the-Fic-on-Pinboard I Always Play to Win

Murklins’s userscripts are archived here on the static copy of the now defunct Userscripts.org. I especially recommend the following, with the caveat that these scripts have not been updated in years and I have not recently tested their functionality:

Pinboard - Sort Visible Links

Pinboard - Organize Taglist in Posting Page

Pinboard - Taglist Highlighting in Posting Page

Pinboard - URL Cleaner 

Additional Pinboard userscripts can be found on GreasyFork.

[illyria-and-her-pet]

My Browser Extensions & Userscripts

The browsers I’ve used are Opera (& Opera GX), Firefox, Brave, Google Chrome, Ungoogled Chromium, Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, and Waterfox. These are the extensions I use on them. For any extensions that have to do with downloading videos, see my Video Downloaders post that includes not just extensions, but also download managers, websites, and more. 

Notes for Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, Waterfox, and Ungoogled Chromium:

Opera has it’s own add-on store along with the capability to download Chrome extensions. To download Chrome extensions all you have to do is download this extension.

Brave and Vivaldi don’t have their own add-on stores, but you can download any extensions in the Chrome store like you would in Chrome without having to do anything beforehand. 

Waterfox is a fork of FIrefox that works with legacy add-ons and most current Firefox add-ons in the Firefox store. To get legacy add-ons, download the classic archive XPI from GitHub.The legacy add-ons that I use that aren’t usable in Firefox are Simple Add-On Manager (it lets you enable/disable extensions, themes, and plug-ins easily), Chrome Store Foxifed (converts Chrome CRX extensions into Firefox XPI extensions), and BarTab Plus (automatically unloads inactive tabs). For any current Firefox extensions that say they aren’t compatible, you can just got to see version history of the the add-ons in the Firefox store and download an latest older version that is compatible and if none are compatible, check the classic add-ons.

For ungoogled chromium, you have to change chrome://flags/#extension-mime-request-handling to Always Prompt for Install and get the .crx files from sites like crx4chrome or crxextractor.

AdBlocker (ESSENTIAL TO HAVE ONE... Also don’t use AdBlock or AdBlock Plus... Please choose EITHER AdGuard or uBlock Origin)

AdGuard (Available for Chrome/Brave/Vivaldi/Yandex, Opera, Firefox, Edge, & Safari on computer + they also have a free app for Android & iOS [Safari on iPhone & iPad])

AdGuard is my favorite adblocking browser extension. I used to use uBlock Origin + Nano Defender, which are also excellent, but then I discovered AdGuard, which I liked even better and uninstalled those since you shouldn’t use more than one adblocker in your browser. The reason I love AdGuard is because it works while still enabled on sites where you would have to disable uBlock Origin to get the site to work (ie. stream.nbcsports.com, youku.com).

The default settings of AdGuard are already great (just AdGuard base filter enabled), but you can enable even more filter lists and settings for the best browser experience. The ones I enable to block the most ads/annoyances/get the best privacy, while also not breaking sites I use are: AdGuard Base Filter, Peter Lowe’s List, AdGuard Tracking Protection Filter, Easy Privacy, AdGuard Social Media Filter, AdGuard Annoyances Filter, Adblock Warning Removal List, Malware Domains, Spam404, NoCoin Filter List, and Filter unblocking search ads and self-promotion. I also have Phishing & Malware Protection and Stealth Mode (Self Destructing 3rd party cookies with 2880 lifetime, Hide Referrer from third-parties, Hide your search queries, Send Do-Not-Track header, Remove Tracking Parameters) enabled.

Social Media/Enhancers

Good Twitter (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi), Firefox/Waterfox)

Light extensions that change your user agent to Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 9.0; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) on only twitter.com to give you the previous twitter desktop layout back. 

If you have Firefox or Waterfox, you can also change your twitter back without an extension by going to about:config, find the general.useragent.site_specific_overrides setting, right click, choose new string, enter general.useragent.override.twitter.com as the preference name, and Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 9.0; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) as the string value.

New XKit (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox/Waterfox, Safari) 

Note: For Firefox there is a version in the Firefox add-ons store, but it is only version 7.8.2 instead of the latest 7.9.0, so I’m linking the github xpi instead. You can just click on the xpi and Firefox should display continue to extension from github, click continue, and then the normal add add-on pop that you get for any extensions should show up and just click add/confirm your installation. If that doesn’t work, you can save the xpi to your computer, go to your Firefox add-ons page, click “install add-on from file”, choose the xpi, and then the normal add-on pop up will appear and you can click add/confirm your installation. 

An amazing extension that makes using Tumblr 1000x better and allows you to add Tumblr enhancement extensions to tumblr.com. XInbox, One-Click Postage, One-Click Reply, Tweaks, and XCloud are already installed by default. The other extensions I have installed are Go-To-Dash, Don’t Stretch Photosets, Timestamps, Soft Refresh, Search Likes, Mutual Checker, Find Inactives, Outbox, Post Archiver, Post Limit Checker, Show Picture Size, Activity+, Anti-Capitalism, Drafts+, Mass+, Read More Now, Quick Tags, Reply Viewer, TagViewer, and View on Dash. 

Chrome IG Story (Opera/Ungoogled Chromium)

Note: This was originally an extension for Chrome, but got removed from the Chrome web store. I already had it installed from the web store on Chrome and it continued to work even after it was removed. However, you can’t install it for Chrome or Brave or Vivaldi anymore even with the CRX file because it will give you  a “CRX Header Invalid” error. From the site I linked, you can still install it for Opera though by simply clicking "Download from Google CDN” or “Download from Crx4Chrome.” You can also install it on Ungoogled Chromium, if you have chrome://flags/#extension-mime-request-handling set to Always Prompt for Install like I mentioned in the note at the beginning of my post.

An extension that lets you view, download, and get direct URLs for instagram stories and live videos on the web version.

Reddit Enhancement Suite (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox, Waterfox (use version 5.12.8), Edge)

Reddit Enhancement Suite is a suite of tools to enhance your Reddit browsing experience. It includes features such as: - Never Ending Reddit - never click "next page" again! - Inline Image Viewer - adds buttons to view images without leaving the page, including support for imgur albums and more - Keyboard Navigation - browse reddit more efficiently than ever before with keyboard shortcuts for most functionality - Uppers and Downers - see the hidden vote totals that Reddit provides behind the scenes - Account Switcher - switch accounts easily and quickly - User Tagger - keep track of users you run across frequently, complete with color coded tags, etc.

An extension that makes your reddit experience way better. It works best when you use the old reddit (you can opt out of new reddit design in your account or you can just go to old.reddit.com) aka the superior reddit.

Enhancer for YouTube (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox/Waterfox, Edge)

Tons of features to improve your user experience on YouTube™: 

 ✔ Control volume level and playback speed with the mouse wheel   ✔ Remove ads from videos (automatically or on-demand)   ✔ Whitelist channels to not automatically remove their ads   ✔ Remove annotations (automatically or on-demand)   ✔ Automatically play videos in 4K, HD, or any other preferred format   ✔ Loop videos (in part or in whole)   ✔ Use custom themes   ✔ Use a larger video player   ✔ Pin the video player   ✔ Execute your own actions using JavaScript ✔ Disable next video autoplay

Social Fixer (Chrome/Brave/Vivaldi, Opera, Firefox/Waterfox, Safari, Userscript) 

Social Fixer for Facebook fixes annoyances, adds features, and enhances existing functionality to make FB more fun and efficient. Filter the news feed, hide sponsored posts and political posts, hide parts of the page you don't want to see, and more!

Thread Reader (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox/Waterfox)

This adds an “Unroll in Thread Reader” option under the arrow with the more options in a tweet, which directly takes you the unrolled thread, making it easier to read twitter threads without having to tweet at the thread reader bot or manually enter URLs on their website. 

Userscripts

You can use userscripts by downloading the userscript manager extensions: Tampermonkey (Chrome/Brave/Vivaldi, Opera, Firefox/Waterfox, Edge, Safari) or Violentmonkey (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox/Waterfox). 

On Chromium browsers, Waterfox, and  Edge I use Tampermonkey because the AdGuard Popup Blocker only works with Tampermonkey for me and VK Media Downloader still works with it. On Firefox, I use Violentmonkey because VK Media Downloader stopped working for me with Tampermonkey on Firefox on both my Windows 10 and Linux computer. AdGuard Popup Blocker doesn’t work with Violentmonkey for me (or on my Windows 10 computer even with Tampermonkey, though AdGuard Popup Blocker does work with Firefox/Tampermonkey for me on Linux), so I also use Popup Blocker (strict) (Chrome/Brave/Vivaldi, Opera, Firefox, Edge) on Firefox.

The userscripts I use are:

AntiAdware- Remove forced download accelerators, managers, and adware on supported websites

AdGuard Popup Blocker- Blocks popups on all websites

Resize Image On “Open Image In New Tab”- Super useful userscript that automatically opens images in their original/largest size (especially useful for tumblr images from text posts that get cut down to like 500 width, but with this they go back to their original size like 540 or 1280)

AdsByPasser- Skips countdown ads or continue pages or shortened links

Local YouTube Downloader- Shows all direct YouTube googlevideo URLs under each YouTube video 

VK Media Downloader- Adds a download button to VK videos and allows you to view or download direct VK video URLs

KissAnime Anti-Adblock Blocker- Removes the cruft, obtrusive advertising and their Anti-Adblock nuisance screen

KissAnime Complete captcha removal- After installing this script you'll probably forget about captchas in Kissanime for good, because it jumps directly to the video without passing by the captcha's page. The only catch is that you'll be using Rapidvideo server as long as this script is activated. (In case you choose a different server you'll have to manually answer the captcha)

Productivity/Usefulness 

Extensity (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi)

A LIFESAVER and MUST HAVE extension for anyone who uses a Chromium based browser. It allows you to quickly enable or disable any extensions (so you don’t have to go to your browser extension page and manually enable and disable there), turn on and off all your extensions at once, and create different profiles for which extensions will be enabled or disabled in them. If you’re someone who uses a lot of extensions like me, it’s absolutely essential, especially since some extensions may break some sites and this lets you easily turn them off if they do. 

Google Translate (Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox/Waterfox) or Translator for Microsoft Edge

These give you the ability to translate entire pages in the same tab/page just like Google Chrome’s built in feature

PageZipper (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox/Waterfox)

A super useful extension that makes it so pages like photo galleries, articles/slide shows with “next”, forum posts, search page results, comment pages, basically anything with multiple pages, etc. loads all on the same page when you scroll. It’s so convenient to not have to constantly click next and spend time loading new pages. All you have to do to enable the extension is click on the icon in your toolbar (you can tell when it’s on when the icon turns green).  

The Great Suspender (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi) or Auto Tab Discard (Firefox)

Extensions that automatically suspend tabs you aren’t using, so they don’t use CPU or memory while they’re open

AutoplayStopper (Chrome/Opera/Vivaldi, also works in Waterfox using Chrome Store Foxified)

Note: Not necessary in Firefox or Brave. In Firefox, you can change media.autoplay.allow-muted and media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed to false in about:config settings to stop autoplay. As of Firefox 69, Firefox automatically blocks autoplay of both audio and video by default without having to change anything in the about:config settings! :D Brave automatically stops autoplay by default. Both allow you to whitelist sites where blocking autoplay makes videos fail to play. In Waterfox, you can set media.autoplay.enabled to false, but there isn’t a whitelist option and this can break sites, so I prefer to use AutoplayStopper since you can choose to allow autoplay on sites with the extension.

An extension that stops autoplay of HTML 5 and flash videos (you can also allow autoplay if it breaks any sites like rabb.it for example)

Buster: Captcha Solver for Humans (Chrome/Brave/Vivaldi, Opera, Firefox/Waterfox)

Buster is a browser extension which helps you to solve difficult captchas by completing reCAPTCHA audio challenges using speech recognition. Challenges are solved by clicking on the extension button at the bottom of the reCAPTCHA widget. 

f*ck overlays (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi) or ffCk Overlays (Firefox)

Right click on any element or overlay in a page and choose “fuck it” to get rid of it

Peek (Chrome/Brave/Vivaldi, Opera, Firefox/Waterfox) 

An amazing extension that lets you view downloadable media without having to download it! It works for me to watch mediafire videos without downloading them for example.

Page Cache Archiver (Firefox, Waterfox [use version 1.7.0]) or Wayback Machine (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi)

Page Cache Archiver is the best of the page archiving extensions because it lets you save current pages and get previous archived pages using basically all the archiving sites. It does have a Chromium version, but it’s not nearly as good as the Firefox version, so I only recommend it for Firefox. On Firefox, you see all the options when you right click the extension icon on the toolbar. On Chromium browsers... you can’t see any of the options and when you try to change the action on click it automatically goes back to default settings, so all clicking does is save current pages to archive.is. 

Wayback Machine is my preferred archiver extension for Chrome/Brave/Opera. It only uses Wayback Machine, but it allows you to save and get previous archived pages for any site. And if a site has a 404 not found error, it will automatically ask you if you want to find archived versions. You can also choose between the first archived version or the most recent one.

Volume Master (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi)

An extension that lets you adjust the volume for each tab and lets you increase the volume up to 600%. Super useful for any videos with really quiet audio. 

User-Agent Switcher and Manager (Chrome/Brave/Vivaldi, Opera, Firefox/Waterfox)

This extension allows you to reliably spoof your browser "User-Agent" string to a custom one. The extension provides a list of all well-known "User-Agent" strings for different browsers and operating systems as follows:

Supported operating systems: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Chromium OS, Ubuntu, Debian, Android, iOS, AmigaOS, OpenBSD, BeOS, Haiku, Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Slackware, SUSE, gentoo, Fedora, Gentoo, Mageia, CentOS, Mint, DragonFly, Kubuntu, Mandriva, Zenwalk, Unix, GNU, OS/2, AIX, QNX, BEOS, RISC OS, Symbian, Nintendo, OpenSolaris, Kubuntu

Supported browsers: Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Edge, WebKit, Avant, Maxthon, Arora, Mozilla, Epiphany, Camino, Chimera, Chromium, Dragon, conkeror, Conkeror, Dillo, Links, Firebird, Swiftfox, Netscape, Flock, iCab, Iceape, icecat, IceCat, IceWeasel, Iron, Meleon, Konqueror, Lunascape, Lynx, MAXTHON, midori, Midori, KHTML, Mosaic, NetSurf, OmniWeb, Tablet, Mini, Phoenix, RockMelt, Safari, Browser, SeaMonkey, Slim, Webkit, w3m

Super useful, especially for Opera. For me, DisneyNow can’t be played on Opera because it will say my browser doesn’t support HLS Streaming, but I just change my user-agent to Chrome with this and then it works perfectly!

Picture-in-Picture (Chrome/Brave/Vivaldi)

Note: Not necessary for Opera or Firefox. Opera already has video pop out enabled by default and Firefox picture in picture can be enabled in about:config settings by changing media.videocontrols.picture-in-picture.enabled, media.videocontrols.picture-in-picture.video-toggle.enabled, and media.videocontrols.picture-in-picture.video-toggle.flyout-enabled to true.

For some video sites in Chrome/Brave (the well known ones like YouTube for example), you can just right click and see picture in picture built in. However, the extension is much better for working on nearly every site. The extension works on rabb.it and DisneyNOW for example, while the built in right click doesn’t. For the extension you just have to click on the icon in your toolbar. 

OpenVideo - ad-free streaming (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox/Waterfox)

You can... ...watch every video on the internet without ads or popups (even on sites which block adblockers) ...download every video ...watch every video in theatre mode (useful for annoyingly bright websites with too small video players) ...watch videos over a proxy for more anonymity and to surpass geo-blocking (eg. Indonesia) ...add subtitles easily from url or hard drive ...watch videos again over the library (starts video where you left) How it works: ► when OpenVideo detects a video on your current site, the number of detected videos will be shown on the OpenVideo extension icon ► click the icon to watch these videos without ads or popups The OpenVideo player is automatically used on the following streaming hosts: ► OpenLoad ► FrutStreams (Streamango / Streamcherry / ...) ► RapidVideo ► MyCloud ► Mp4Upload ► Vidoza ► StreamCloud ► Vivo ► VidTo ► SpeedVid ► FlashX ► TheVideo

The Camelizer (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox/Waterfox)

Shows price history while viewing items on Amazon

Absolute Enable Right Click & Copy (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox/Waterfox)

Gets right click and copy and paste to work on sites that disabled it. For any site that blocks right click and/or copy, just click on this extension and enable copy mode and absolute mode. Unnecessary on Chrome/Brave/Opera if you have the feature to block websites copy and right click protections in Browser Plugs Fingerprint Privacy Wall.

Privacy and Security

Privacy Badger (Chrome/Brave/Vivaldi, Opera, Firefox/Waterfox)

Privacy Badger automatically learns to block invisible trackers. Instead of keeping lists of what to block, Privacy Badger learns by watching which domains appear to be tracking you as you browse the Web. Privacy Badger sends the Do Not Track signal with your browsing. If trackers ignore your wishes, your Badger will learn to block them. Privacy Badger starts blocking once it sees the same tracker on three different websites. Besides automatic tracker blocking, Privacy Badger removes outgoing link click tracking on Facebook, Google and Twitter, with more privacy protections on the way.

Privacy Badger is an awesome extension that blocks trackers. For the most part, it doesn’t break sites, but if it does, you can easily just disable it for the site, if you’re not tech savvy. My favorite thing for those that are tech savvy though is you can adjust each individual tracker, so you can enable the one needed to unbreak the site, while still blocking the rest of the trackers. 

Decentraleyes (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox/Waterfox)

Protects you against tracking through "free", centralized, content delivery. It prevents a lot of requests from reaching networks like Google Hosted Libraries, and serves local files to keep sites from breaking. Complements regular content blockers.

Excellent privacy extension that has never broken any sites for me

HTTPS Everywhere (Chrome/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox, Waterfox [use version 2019.6.4])

Encrypt the Web! Automatically use HTTPS security on many sites. HTTPS Everywhere is an extension created by EFF and the Tor Project which automatically switches thousands of sites from insecure "http" to secure "https". It will protect you against many forms of surveillance and account hijacking, and some forms of censorship.

NOTE: Unnecessary if you use Brave, since HTTPS Everywhere is already built into Brave’s Shield. Also, for Opera most extensions download fine directly from the Chrome store, but for some reason this one is super buggy and doesn’t work for me a lot. But downloading from CRX4Chrome or CRX Extractor works fine for me.

Another privacy extension that has never broken any sites for me :)

Cookie AutoDelete (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox, Waterfox [use version 2.2.0])

Automatically deletes cookies from closed tabs or windows and lets you whitelist sites to keep cookies on, so you don’t have to constantly log back in and out

NoScript (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox, Waterfox [use version 5.1.8.4 through Classic Add-Ons Archive])

Note: You should only use this if you’re willing for a lot of websites to break because it disables javascript on all sites by default. You have to enable the scripts on a page to get the pages working yourself. I love this because it allows me to have only the scripts necessary for the website to work running, while all the other scripts get blocked. 

I don’t care about cookies (Chrome/Brave/Vivaldi, Opera, Firefox/Waterfox)

Allows only cookies necessary for the page to work and gets rid of annoying cookie notices on websites

CanvasBlocker (Firefox/Waterfox) or Canvas Fingerprint Defender (Chrome/Opera/Vivaldi)

Note: Unnecessary on Brave, since Brave Shield has the option to block 3rd party fingerprinting or all fingerprinting. In Brave, you can also change the settings per site in the shield to all device recognition allowed, if it breaks a specific site.

Fakes canvas fingerprint value to protect you from sites trying to fingerprint you

Browser Plugs Fingerprint Privacy Wall (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi)

Privacy extension that blocks font fingerprinting, webGL fingerprinting, can remove right click or copy restrictions, etc. There’s also a white list, if any sites get broken (for me I had to add youku, discord, and dailymotion to the white list to unbreak them). 

minerBlock (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox/Waterfox)

Blocks cryptominers, which is very useful when visiting torrent sites 

CSS Exfill Protection (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox/Waterfox)

Guard your browser against CSS Exfil attacks! CSS Exfil is a method attackers can use to steal data from web pages using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This plugin sanitizes and blocks any CSS rules which may be designed to steal data.

ClearURLs (Chrome/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi, Firefox/Waterfox)

Removes tracking and other extra unnecessary parameters from URLs using around 130 rules

Don’t touch my tabs (rel=noopener) [Firefox/Waterfox]

Prevent tabs opened by a hyperlink from hijacking the previous tab by adding the rel=noopener attribute to all hyperlinks (excluding same-domain hyperlinks).

Privacy Oriented Origin Policy (Firefox, Waterfox [use version 0.3.0]) 

Prevent Firefox from sending Origin headers when they are least likely to be necessary, to protect your privacy.

[hedonicghost]

Hi, @onewomancitadel! Sorry to use your tags as an excuse to show how to do this, but we were hesitant about this as well for the same reasons! But it turned out to be super easy AND simple to reverse if necessary, so I'm going to make sort of a step-by-step guide for those unsure!

TAMPERMONKEY INSTALL

i linked to their website jic you werent using firefox (which you should be if you arent) but it does just end up linking to the firefox addon store anyway.

so go ahead and add that beast!

it asks for quite a few permissions, but tampermonkey itself doesn't actually access any of this to any extent. it just gives whatever code you write/install the ability to. so, in general, as it says on their page after you install it...

DON'T DOWNLOAD BAD SCRIPTS! read through it a bit first, only download stuff with reputable comments if you're nervous, etc etc. Tampermonkey itself, again, doesn't really do anything that could put your privacy at risk.

DASHBOARD UNFUCKER

github has always scared me, tbh. there's too much going on on that site, so this is the fastest way to gtfo of that site. you can also generally follow this plan of attack for any other userscript you want to slap into tampermonkey, but some devs make it easier than this even! it depends on where you get your stuff from. anyway, access the .js file by clicking it.

i personally like to get the raw file in my broswer so i can just ctrl+a to select the whole page and copy it that way, but you can also just. copy the code from this page. either way, you need to copy the ENTIRETY of what's typed up in that .js file

PUT THEM TOGETHER!

look to wherever you're hiding tampermonkey (toolbar, extension folder, etc) and open up the dashboard

click the little + sign box over there. you don't NEED to do anything on the extension dashboard if you don't want to, they do all of the work for you by default

see! the even give you some code to start with! we don't care about that right now, though, so get rid of it and paste the code from github in there

((i guess you could also have just saved the .js file and imported it into the new tampermonkey file...? but i like throwing things around lol))

anyway! after sticking the code in, hit FILE and then SAVE and... from there, that's basically it! tampermonkey will see all the details the developer put into those comments and it'll be set up to inform you when there's updates available to the code! or you don't have to update it! or you can check on it occasionally on your own! either way, you're done.

i'm hitting a word limit i didn't know existed, but this is what it looks like after you install it! it's a bit glitchy and weird looking on some pages, but it's at least not whatever the fuck it was before. also i have xkit and some userstyles installed so i might have even more of a glitchier experience than you might, but i've been really happy with this for a few days now!

to conclude: PLEASE make sure you're reporting FEEDBACK to staff about this update. they won't do anything if we just ignore it, you HAVE to tell them what you think or they'll just keep throwing this shithole down the drain. if you've read this far (and maybe even installed it!!!!) i hope you have a GREAT day!!! you're cherished and i'm very happy you're crossing my path today :3c

get tampermonkey and download the dashboard unfucker right now and send staff feedback on the desktop site

[fleet-off]

For those wishing for a truly streamlined AO3 experience, may I also suggest Min’s AO3: Kudosed and seen history userscript? It lets you keep track of which works you’ve already finished reading and collapses them for you so that you don’t have to check their tags and summaries every time you come across them in your search results.

Let me show off what this userscript does.

From a list of fics (be it in search, a tag, or an author's works), hover over any fic with your cursor and you’ll see a small blurb appear in its upper right corner:

Marking a work “Seen” collapses it to hide the tags and summary. You can still see the title, author, and the square of content markers that goes to the left of the title.

Much shorter! This shortens results pages immensely. You can expand a Seen work with one click if you do want to check the tags and summary.

Marking a work “Skipped” collapses it to the word Skipped.

No title, no author, no warnings. (You can also change the script's settings to hide skipped fics entirely.) I often mark individual works skipped when I don’t feel like blocking from my AO3 filtering skin, since skipping only takes one click.

Additionally, fics that you have kudosed get a cute little icon next to the title!

To use this fantastic script, you do need a userscript manager extension for your browser. This is super easy and only takes a couple of minutes to set up--check chapter 5 of the guide I linked above to learn how.

I was today years old when I learned that when you type “otp: true” in AO3 search results it filters out fics with additional ships, leaving only the fics where your otp is the main ship

[shinelikethunder]

To the anon: the amount of coding it takes to build your own Tumblr theme, AO3 skin, or rinkydink 90s-style webpage is ABSOLUTELY something you can learn by DIY exploration. HTML, roughly speaking the "noun" skeleton of a webpage's structure, is super beginner friendly. CSS, the "adjectives" side that controls color and size and spacing and lets you tweak the layout, is also pretty approachable, and it's really easy to go in and mess with the existing CSS styling of a page and see what happens.

This is true in general, tbh - you CAN learn by building things from scratch, but there's a really rich ecosystem of ways to view, live-edit, save modified copies, or run little custom overrides of existing page code.

"Actual coding" generally refers to the "verbs" side - imperative programming languages like JavaScript where you're telling the computer to Do Action X To Thing Y. That's got a bit of a steeper learning curve, but as mentioned, "fiddling with widgets that already exist on a webpage" tasks are one of the more approachable ways to get into it.

(JavaScript is the one that runs in your browser. Python, Ruby, Java, PHP, etc. need to be installed on your computer or a webserver, and are generally used to run more powerful - and more dangerous - apps that can fuck around with the filesystem and use a database and such. SQL is a smaller, specialized language for talking to databases.)

Ways to dive in and experiment:

You can literally write any crappy malformed HTML you want in a text editor like Notepad, save the file with a .html extension, and Right-click -> Open With to view it in your browser, which will make heroic efforts to turn it into a readable webpage.

Hit Ctrl+U on any webpage to view its raw source HTML. (May not be as helpful on sites like Tumblr that load a bunch of their contents on the fly through advanced JavaScript sorcery.)

On any page, sorcery-based or otherwise, Right-click -> Inspect Element or Ctrl+Shift+I will open up a fancy expandable view of the current contents and how the CSS styles are being applied to the HTML elements, and will let you get details on specific chunks and live-edit their styling. Any changes you make will show up temporarily and then vanish when you hit refresh or leave the page.

Once you're in that view, you can click over to the Console tab to type in whatever lines of JavaScript you feel like running to see what happens. Console will also show you any error messages the page has spat out.

On Tumblr, Edit Appearance -> Edit Theme -> Edit HTML will let you fuck with the HTML/CSS/JS of your blog theme, see a live preview, and save it when you're ready. You can make a sideblog for theme experimentation, pick anything from the theme garden, and modify it to your heart's content.

The Tampermonkey extension lets you write small bits of JavaScript called userscripts that run in the browser whenever you visit a particular site, and do whatever you want to the page contents.

Resources:

W3Schools is a good ol' standby for tutorials. Mozilla's documentation on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is fantastic when you want an exhaustive reference on everything a particular doohickey can do.

Search "Skin Tutorial" on AO3 for walkthroughs of things you can do with custom CSS, to the entire site or a single work. These are saved to your user account, not just the browser, so they'll also work across devices and on mobile when you're logged in.

Search "AO3" on GreasyFork.org to get an idea of what can be done with Tampermonkey scripts. You can also view the code of each one, and once you've installed someone else's script you can custom-edit it any way you want; the extension has a live editor.

Tumblr's custom theme documentation is a pretty good breakdown of the Tumblr-specific additions to vanilla HTML that let you insert blog data where you want it to go, and of the data that's available.

Neocities will let you build and host your own oldskool static webpages for free, and has an online HTML editor if you don't feel like uploading files.

Bonus: If you want a peek into what the guts of larger-scale "real" web apps look like, a lot of them have their code available on GitHub, including a bunch of fandom's faves:

The New XKit browser extension and its successor XKit Rewritten. The archive software that runs AO3. The heavily-modified old LiveJournal code that runs Dreamwidth. Tumblr doesn't publish much of its own in-house code but it does put out tools like an official Python library for third-party apps that want to talk directly to Tumblr's servers. And most self-hosted blog/forum/wiki software, including Wordpress and its entire ecosystem of plugins and themes, is open-source and can be examined and tinkered with at will.

However, please do NOT dive too deep if you're going to find this stuff intimidating compared to messing around with custom CSS in your blog theme. Because tbh, most personal DIY projects are gonna be more at the scale of custom themes and userscripts than giant platform software. I'm mostly linking to show that the opportunities to see how the sausage is made, crib from it, fuck around, and use modded versions of other people's code don't go away as you scale up into Srs Bsns Web Development. In fact, they tend to expand into opportunities to submit your own contributions to a project you love.

How difficult is learning how to code? I've seen a lot of discussion about how a lot of older fandom people are used to building their own sites and stuff and how younger people on the internet don't really know how to do that, so I've been thinking of getting into it...

--

Coding coding or html? 90s-style sites are really, really basic on a technical level. I learned in an afternoon from that girl's eye-searingly orange/pink tutorial site back in the day.

Actual coding comes in many levels of complexity. Learn a dab of python, and you can do things like automate downloading all the works in your AO3 history. Easier still is learning just enough to run other people's scripts.

One of the bigger issues with building sites/tools that people interact with is security. If you have anything other people are logging into and you suck at that, their passwords are going to get leaked. But if you're building a more static thing that doesn't store other people's data, that's a lot easier.

There are tons of free tutorials online for all sorts of tech things. Figure out what you're interested in and I'm sure you can find some.