[HN Gopher] Chrome extension adjusts video speed based on how fa...
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Chrome extension adjusts video speed based on how fast the speaker
is talking
Author : MrBuddyCasino
Score : 60 points
Date : 2026-03-13 06:18 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| Mc_Big_G wrote:
| I have a policy against installing extensions but I might make an
| exception for this one. I default to 2x and often have to go to
| 3x if the speaker is really slow. The one exception is music
| production related videos and it is sometimes excruciating to get
| through. This is most likely because I'm usually watching some
| kind of instructional or educational video and just want the
| content and have no interest in being "entertained". That said, I
| understand that you have to game YouTube's algo and rules in
| order to make even a tiny bit of money. Imagine if every channel
| cut the first 30 seconds of every video intro and everyone could
| just get to the point.
| altairprime wrote:
| You could make a rewrite extension that seeks all video
| elements to 30s by default. Might not be perfect but it sounds
| like it would be useful for you.
| efilife wrote:
| what's rewrite?
| altairprime wrote:
| For example: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/re-enable-rig... is a Firefox extension
| that 'rewrites' webpages to remove 'disable right click'
| code, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/disable-autop... 'rewrites' webpages to
| disable HTML5 video autoplay, etc. So you could, perhaps,
| rewrite the <source src=""> attribute within <video>
| elements to, if it doesn't already end with #t=x (x is in
| seconds), to end with #t=30. (Perhaps only the first one?
| This isn't something I desire, so my investment is
| limited.)
|
| See also: https://www.w3.org/TR/media-frags/
| childintime wrote:
| Or ask gemini to summarize the video instead.
| navark wrote:
| The extension you are looking for is "Sponsorblock". It crowd
| sources timestamps to auto-skip intros, ad-reads, credits, etc
| and is pretty customizable.
| nomilk wrote:
| Sponsorblock instantly 'broke' video for me; I feel
| incredible discomfort watching any video without it. Amazing
| extension.
|
| Such is its utility, this single extension lifts youtube as a
| platform higher above tv or or native video players on other
| sites which don't have any sponsorblock capability.
| Bolwin wrote:
| Very interesting idea, but doesn't seem to work very well. I
| tried on three videos. On two it miscounted to an absurdly low
| rate of ~1 syllable/s and played it at the max speed which was
| illegible and in one it failed to detect any speech at all.
| golfer wrote:
| This is a very clever idea. Unfortunately I dislike installing
| extensions, because so many of them seem to get taken over by
| nefarious owners. Sadly it's poisoned the whole extension
| platform for me.
|
| FYI: On Youtube, the keyboard shortcut for changing the video
| speed is simply pressing < or >
| Gander5739 wrote:
| This extension appears to be installed directly from the files
| - I don't think it would automatically update even if a
| nefarious owner later gained control of the repository.
| varenc wrote:
| Note that this extension is offered on GitHub, not the Chrome
| Extension store, so if you load it from source it'll never be
| updated unless you update the code.
|
| I do this for any extension I give big permissions. Rather than
| installing it from the Chrome extension store, I just download
| its source and 'load unpacked extension' directly. This method
| is just a roundabout a way to disable Chrome extension updates.
| (and of course I'm still trusting the extension's code quite a
| bit, but at least I don't have to worry about it changing)
| apparent wrote:
| Pretty cool, would be great if it could detect accented speech
| and have a different normalized speed for that. I listen to most
| people at 2x or more, but I can't usually understand accented
| English quite that fast.
| hackemmy wrote:
| This is really cool. I build Chrome extensions too and the
| hardest part with anything audio related is getting the detection
| right across different types of content. Lectures vs podcasts vs
| casual vlogs all have very different speech patterns. I wonder if
| this could also work with non-English content since syllable
| detection probably breaks down with tonal languages.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Damn it!
|
| Now I am called The Snail Speaker. :(
|
| What I found interesting is ... if you have some recorded
| lectures from a university, some speakers are ultra-fast at 1x
| speed; and some others are acceptable once at 1.5 or 1.75.
|
| Most I find difficult to understand at 2.0x though, so I mostly
| settled between the range of 1.25 to 1.5, sometimes 1.75 (depends
| on the topic too, of course; some topic is harder to understand,
| but here my thought was that some are able to speak fast and
| others can not. It's almost a skill to have or not have).
| ortusdux wrote:
| This would be a killer feature for a podcast app. I can't stomach
| NPR content unless it's sped up to almost 2x, with the exception
| of a few fast talking hosts.
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