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Official Turn Off the Lights Blog

YouTube Video Setting to Block 60fps + Night Mode Update

Posted on by Stefan Van Damme

The YouTube video setting you will need to get not a hot laptop. Today there is a new version available for the Google Chrome users (and later this month for the other web browsers such as Firefox, Opera)! In the Turn Off the Lights Chrome extension v3.2.0.15 we added two new features inside that helps you get great performance on YouTube. And get a comfortable way discover the hyperlinks, if you have enabled the Night Mode feature.

YouTube Video Setting

Are the YouTube videos you are watching take up too much CPU, or is the YouTube videos stutter, or even worse, it eat your battery life very quickly, or you can fry an egg on your laptop. If you got an old computer, the YouTube performance is not very well on this kind of (old) hardware. Even today, more YouTubers have uploaded the 60fps videos to YouTube.

You as a user can fix this easily with one checkbox. So its use back the Standard Frame Rate of 30fps back on all your YouTube videos (and embedded YouTube players). Open the Turn Off the Lights options page -> Basics tab. Just right of the AutoHD feature, enable the option “Block 60fps”. And now it will play them back more smoothly.

YouTube video setting block 60 frame per second
The YouTube AutoHD (8K, 5K, 4K, 1080p, 720p) feature with the option to block 60fps

Change the hyperlink color in the Night Mode feature

When it’s night you can convert a website to a darker theme. That’s where the Night Mode feature is here.
Now in the Turn Off the Lights options page you can also change the color of all the hyperlinks in the Night Mode. So you can see the working hyperlinks on your favourite website. See example here below of the Google News website.

Night Mode disable with the regular website content and color
Night Mode disabled with the regular website style
Night Mode with custom color for the hyperlinks
Night Mode activated with the hyperlinks in orange

Download the update now in your Google Chrome web browser and try today this new YouTube video setting to block 60fps.

Do you like our project? Please support our work. By sharing and rate 5 stars in the Chrome web store! And if you can make a donation of any amount, we’d appreciate it immensely!

About The Author

Stefan Van Damme

Stefan Van Damme is the lead Developer of the Turn Off the Lights Browser Extension for Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox, Maxthon, Yandex, Vivaldi, Brave, and Microsoft Edge.

Turn Off the Lights Firefox WebExtensions Ready To Test It Out!

Posted on by Stefan Van Damme

We last updated you on our progress with the Turn Off the Lights Microsoft Edge Extension, and today we have an update for the Firefox Webextensions extension, which is ready for in the Firefox Nightly web browser.

Mozilla Firefox is also moving to the same extension API as the Google Chrome Extension platform later this year. They called it the Webextensions. This technology is designed for cross-browser compatibilities such as Google Chrome, Opera, Chromium, and Microsoft Edge. Where Webextensions is more secure than the old Firefox overlay XUL technology.

Turn Off the Lights Firefox WebExtensions for Firefox Nightly
Firefox Nightly with the Turn Off the Lights extension

What’s new in this Webextensions version?

When you install this extension for the first time in your Firefox web browser, you will see that the gray lamp button is now in the address bar. And that it will not disturb you as a button in the toolbar. The lamp button is only visible on the website where it works such as the http and https protocol. It will not be visible on the page where it doesn’t work, such as the about:preferences, the settings page from Firefox.
By moving from XUL to this new extension technology, have this extension finally also the ‘no-restart‘ label. So you don’t need to restart the browser if there is a new Turn Off the Lights extension update is available in Firefox.

Of course are all the other most used features are still here, such as the Night Mode (that converts the webpage from a day to a night theme), the atmosphere lighting for HTML5 videos (shows a glow around the video player), YouTube AutoHD, etc.

You can try yourself the latest Turn Off the Lights Firefox extension (WebExtensions version). We tested it in the latest Firefox Nightly 49.0a1 (2016-04-29). Download the XPI file from our Github website, and load the file in the Firefox web browser from the menu Firefox -> ‘File’ -> ‘Open File…’.

Do you like our project? Please support our work. By sharing it! And if you can make a donation of any amount, we’d appreciate it immensely!

About The Author

Stefan Van Damme

Stefan Van Damme is the lead Developer of the Turn Off the Lights Browser Extension for Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox, Maxthon, Yandex, Vivaldi, Brave, and Microsoft Edge.

Options page for the Turn Off the Lights Edge Extension

Posted on by Stefan Van Damme
Edge extension options page button

The options page is now visible in Microsoft Edge! Microsoft released yesterday the new Windows 10 Insider build 14315 to all insiders. But what’s new in this build for the Extension developers?

Options page

As you read in our previous post, there was a workaround to open this page in your Edge web browser. Now the extension developers can open the Edge extension options page direct from the “extension” sidebar.

Translation

The first time we open our Options page, we saw no translations and only an empty text label. Because the Edge extension is a port of the Google Chrome extension, we found that the Chrome.i18n.getMessage doesn’t work to see our translation. That’s why we converted also here the Chrome.i18n.getMessage to the browser.i18n.getMessage JavaScript code.

Debug

This time Microsoft Edge web browser allows you to debug the background page of the Edge extension. To open this debug window you see an extra link below the path of your extension. When you click on this link (Inspect “Background page”), you see the debug window.

Security

Are there any security issues in Microsoft Edge? Yes, that’s possible. When I add a YouTube <iframe> player inside our options page, the whole page refresh and then it crashes. Or when I open inside the “Turn Off the Lights” Options page the “TOtL Guide”, the same happens here. The whole page crash and go to this page:

ms-appx-web:///assets/errorpages/acr_error.htm#ms-browser-extension://MSGname_pczg5z86wrh92/options.html

Need the roadmap of the Edge extension? You can find it here on that page. And to learn what extension API is supported, see this Microsoft Extension API page.

Want to test the new version of “Turn Off the Lights” with the Options page? Go to www.turnoffthelights.com/browser/edge/ and click on the big blue download button to download the latest version on your Windows 10 desktop computer or Surface.
This Turn Off the Lights version 3.2.0.12 only works on preview build 14316 and later. We make sure this extension comes online on day one. So you get the best night and video experience. Please, if you like our work. Share it! And if you can make a donation of any amount, we’d appreciate it immensely!

About The Author

Stefan Van Damme

Stefan Van Damme is the lead Developer of the Turn Off the Lights Browser Extension for Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox, Maxthon, Yandex, Vivaldi, Brave, and Microsoft Edge.