DeArrow aims to fix YouTube’s sensationalist thumbnails

Damien Wilde / Android Authority

If you’ve used YouTube in the recent past, you’re no stranger to the ridiculous facial expressions that video creators often use in their thumbnails. To make things worse, this is usually paired with a sensational, clickbait title that’s designed to get your attention. While you likely find this annoying, the fact is that you might unwittingly click the video to know what it covers. Unfortunately, this increases the viewer count, which makes the video appear on more people’s feeds. This perpetuates the cycle of clickbait content, making it more likely for creators to use these strategies.

If you can’t stand the clickbait thumbnails and titles anymore, DeArrow might be just the tool for you. Once installed, the open-source browser extension replaces the current thumbnail with a frame from the video. Similarly, clickbait titles are replaced with arbitrary text.

To use this tool, you’ll need to download and activate the extension. Then, you can turn off the title, thumbnail, and emoji replacement options, if desired, to customize your YouTube browsing experience.

On its website, DeArrow notes that replacement titles and frames are “user submitted and voted on. By default, if there are no submissions, it will format the original title to the user-specified format, and set a screenshot from a random timestamp as the thumbnail.”

While creators who employ clickbait strategies to get their videos to the top are unlikely to be thrilled by tools that make their videos appear less appealing, DeArrow can certainly create a more authentic browsing experience for viewers who are tired of coming across misleading content on the platform.

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