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YouTube is sabatoging a script I'm developing. How do I get around that?

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Posted: 27.04.2024

I started by trying to add an item to the sidebar, as the beginning of an interface. I had no end of trouble doing it. And I finally ascertained that YouTube was sabotaging me. I made an observer to fix my item if its HTML wasn't what it should be. And I stepped through it in the console and saw a script called desktop_polymer.js corrupting my element every single time.

How do I get around desktop_polymer.js? How many other ways will YouTube's native scripts sabotage me down the line? How do I get around them?

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Posted: 30.04.2024
Edited: 30.04.2024

YouTube uses Polymer.js as the basis to develope the UI.

The sidebar is one of the UI component. You can use MutationObserver to observe DOM changes to re-insert it after Youtube's change.

For example,

const observer = new MutationObserver(() => {

    if (!document.querySelector('yt-sidebar #my-element')) {

        reInsertMyElement();
    }


});

observer.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree: true });



The changes of YouTube's UI components are quite dynamic.

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