Hide unwanted streams, games, categories, channels and tags on: twitch.tv

Download

• Chrome Web Store
• Firefox Add-ons
• Microsoft Edge-Add-Ons
• other Chromium based browsers (such as Opera, Brave and Vivaldi) are compatible and allow you to load the extension too

Project status

Please note that this extension is in maintenance mode. I will no longer work on new features. However, I will continue to fix issues related to changes on Twitch up to the point where Twitch releases a complete redesign of their website. You can still contribute by translating the extension in your language.

Features

• hide unwanted categories/games
• hide unwanted channels/streams
• hide unwanted tags
• hide stream reruns
• hide streams based on their title
• filtering on "Following" page can be disabled (in settings)
• toggle visibility of "X" buttons
• share blacklists using import/export (in settings)
• blacklist can automatically sync between devices (in settings, requires opt-in)
• one-click-toggle to disable/enable extension (click on the extension icon to access)
• compatible with FrankerFaceZ (FFZ) and other popular extensions for Twitch
• supports Twitch's Dark Mode
• supports pattern matching and regular expressions for dynamic blacklisting

Supported pages

• Browse: Categories
• Browse: Live Channels
• Game: Live Channels (preview is not filtered)
• Game: Videos
• Game: Clips
• Frontpage/Discover (carousel is not filtered)
• Explore Gaming/IRL/Music/Creative (Esports is not filtered)
• Following
• Sidebar (filtering only, no buttons to add items to the blacklist)
• you can still access any blacklisted content via direct link

Note about breaking changes on twitch.tv

Twitch is infamous for changing their website without further notice, which may break this extension over night. Twitch also serves different canary builds (previews of potential future versions) to selected/random users for up to 4 weeks, which most likely break parts of the extension. If you notice pages no longer working properly, disable the extension, report the issue and wait for an update. Note that updates may take a few days to be approved on the corresponding browser stores. Keep an eye on the GitHub commits or follow me on Twitter to receive news regarding new versions.

FAQ / Troubleshooting

There are no X buttons visible anywhere?

• After the first install of the extension, restart your browser. Or at least do a hard refresh (CTRL+R) on all twitch.tv tabs.
• Check if you accidently unchecked the Show "X" Buttons option. It can be found in the extension popup menu or as clickable 👁 icon on the management button.
• Make sure the page is supported, see description. The sidebar generally has no "X" button.

(Firefox) The extension icon is nowhere to be found?

• The icon is part of the address bar (URL) and will only appear if you are on twitch.tv (to the right).

Why do special characters in blocked items disappear?

• This is working as intended. When adding an item, all characters are normalized (i.e. diacritics are removed).
• At runtime, every item in the directory will also be normalized internally before matching against the blocked item.
• Example: Blocking the term ÄéôŪ will be added as aeou, yet it will block items like äëöü, âèôú, ẬỆỘỤ etc. because all of them are normalized as aeou.

What's the maximum number of items I can block?

• When using the cloud synchronization, about 1 MB of data. That roughly translates to about 30.000 items due to internal restrictions. If you exceed this quota, the extension will automatically turn off synchronization and switch to the local storage.
• When using local storage (default), about 5 MB of data. That roughly translates to about 200.000 items.
• Before reaching this upper limit, you will most likely notice a performance degradation first. The extension is generally not designed and optimized for a huge blacklists (50.000+ items).

Channel still show up although I blocked one of the tags?

• Twitch limits the number of visible tags in the directory view. If the blocked tag only shows up on the channel page and is not visible in the directory, the extension cannot filter properly.
• The extension needs to "see" the unwanted content on the page to perform filtering.

Whatever I try to block, the entry is never saved to the blacklist?

• Make sure you restarted your browser after installing the extension.
• Avoid having more than one tab of twitch.tv open while adding to or removing from the blacklist.
• Try switching to local storage (instead of cloud storage). This option can be found in the management view (accessible via the extension popup menu or via management button) by unchecking the box at the top right.
• Close browser system tabs (browser settings, flags, extensions) before adding to or removing from the blacklist.

Are you accessing my Twitch profile in any way?

• No, there is no attempt to access or read any information other than what is needed to detect and identify items to block. These items do not contain sensitive data.
• There is no attempt to write any information to an external resource, other than your personal blacklist in case you are using the cloud storage of your browser. The cloud storage is only accessible to you and the cloud storage's operator, such as Google (Chrome), Mozilla (Firefox), Microsoft (Edge) etc. The blacklist only contains category names, channel names, tags and titles, see export.
• There are no code injections or outgoing requests (such as script tags, fetches or XmlHttpRequests). There is also no dependency on any library other than the native browser extension API (Chrome and WebExtensions).

Contributing to this extension

Regardless if you are a regular user or a developer yourself, check out the contribution page for information about how you can help this project.

Translations

How it works

The extension is loaded after the requested twitch.tv page is fully served and completely relies on the present DOM. It adds button controls to specific nodes that can be used to add the underlying item to the blacklist. The blacklist is held in the storage, either local or synced (can be adjusted in the settings). Once there are items on the blacklist, supported pages are filtered by going through item nodes, matching game/category, channel or tags. A successful match hides the topmost node and marks it as being hidden. Most detections are interval based node comparisons instead of observing mutations in the DOM (I find it more consistent, especially because of the seamless page navigation on Twitch), that's why you might notice a minor flicker effect once in a while.