YouTube Watchmarker is a free browser extension for Mozilla Firefox that marks watched videos on YouTube for easy recognition.
One of the main issues on YouTube is that the site’s watched functionality is terribly broken. While YouTube keeps track of the videos that you have watched, it does not mark those when you use the site, nor removes them from the search results. The only option you have to check your watched history is to sign in to Google or YouTube account whenever you use the site, as this is the only way to have them tracked so tat you can open the listing at any time (as it is associated with your account).
We talked about this issue when we reviewed YouWatch for Opera back in 2011, the Chrome extension YouTweak which removes watched videos on YouTube from the search results, or the Chrome extension Better YouTube Watch History which marks watched videos in Chrome.
YouTube Watchmarker
YouTube Watchmarker keeps track of the video history on YouTube to mark any video that you watched on the site as “watched” when you encounter it again on the site.
Any video that you start to watch is marked as watched, even if you don’t fully watch it. In fact, even if you just watch the video for a couple of seconds, it is marked as watched by the extension.
This works well for search results and channel listings, as well as sidebar suggestions. The thumbnail of the watched video is grayed out to a degree, and the watched mark is added to the video thumbnail as well.
The indicator helps with the identification of watched videos on YouTube, and it works regardless of whether you are signed in to the site or not.
The extension works automatically, but adds an icon to the Firefox toolbar. A click on it loads the options.
You may use the page for the following:
- Import, export or reset the extension’s database — This works as a backup of sorts, but can also be used to use the same database on multiple devices or Firefox profiles. The setting highlights the number of tracked videos as well.
- History lets you sync the extension’s history of watched YouTube videos with the Firefox browsing history. This is not required usually, but if you run into issues somehow, you can run a manual sync job at any time using the option.
- The add-on may sync the data from a YouTube account as well if you are signed in.
The last option that is provided on the page hides the progress bar that is shown on YouTube when you started to watch a video but have not finished it.
Verdict
YouTube Watchmarker is a WebExtension for Firefox which means that it won’t stop working when Mozilla releases Firefox 57. The extension works well, and marks any video that you start watching directly on YouTube.
While it won’t hide watched videos, it does the next best thing, and more reliably than the YouTube system.
Now You:Do you keep track of watched YouTube videos?