With ad-nonsense and enshittification becoming a thing in more and more products, I unfortunately need to rely on an increasing number of browser add-ons in order to have an acceptable browsing experience.

I use Firefox, so all of the add-ons mentioned below are for Firefox. There is often a Chromium version of the add-on, but since I don’t use any Chromium-like browsers (and don’t encourage anyone to do so), I won’t link to them here.

Password Manager

A password manager is the most essential add-on I need for my browser. Without it, I can’t log into any websites.

I won’t mention a specific password manager here because, in my opinion, most (if not all) of them have some downsides, and none of them are perfect.

uBlock Origin

Unfortunately, the internet is no longer usable without an ad blocker. The annoyances of all the ads aside, this is also a serious security and privacy issue.

I personally use uBlock Origin for ad blocking. It just works, and it has plenty of configuration options that allow you to tweak it to your liking.
I also use it (and it’s “annoyances” lists) to block annoying cookie banners, email newsletter pop-ups, and other nonsense that websites do these days to distract your attention.

A lesser-known but super useful function is its custom filter support. It allows you to define custom styles for a website, essentially eliminating the need for a separate plugin for this purpose. Previously I used Stylus for it this.
The ability to just inject custom CSS rules into a website is a game changer. Enforcing a wider layout? No problem. Reducing giant font sizes? Easy. Disabling stupid animations? Done.

Pro tip: Update your configured lists from time to time to keep up with the website’s creativity in circumventing ad-blockers.

NoScript

Many websites nowadays are slow and annoying to use because of their excessive and unnecessary use of JavaScript. As the name suggests, NoScript allows you to disable JavaScript entirely, making the internet (or at least certain pages) much more usable.

One particularly nice feature is that you can temporarily allow JavaScript for websites that refuse to work without it.

Violentmonkey

The opposite of NoScript is Violentmonkey: it allows you to run custom scripts on any website. In essence, it’s custom styles on steroids. There’s nothing you can’t do with it.

ClearURLs

These days, URLs often times contain tracking information that allows linking between you and the person you share a link with. This extension removes all tracking information from the URLs you visit, so that you can share “clean” links without any of this tracking nonsense.

Hide YouTube-Shorts

I hate YouTube shorts with every piece of my body. I hate the format, and I hate YouTube for ruining its user interface in favor of this vertical short video crap.

This extension does as the name says: it hides all short-related stuff from YouTube. No shorts in on any page (subscriptions, recommendations, etc.), no link to shorts in the sidebar, no shorts in search results.

YouTube No Translation

Another YouTube annoyance is their awful auto-dubbing and auto-translation “feature” that they force on everyone. It completely ignores the fact that users may speak multiple languages (English and German in my case), and constantly translates titles, thumbnails, descriptions, and entire audio tracks from German to English or vice versa.

This add-on lets you disable all of this nonsense. No more auto-dubbing or auto-translation anywhere on the page.

Volume Control for Bandcamp Player

This is a small but nice add-on that adds a volume slider to all Bandcamp pages, allowing you to control the volume of the embedded player.

It’s mind-boggling that Bandcamp itself still doesn’t provide this feature, but at least there’s a way to get this functionality thanks to the add-on.

Honorable mention: Tree Style Tab

For years, this extension was an absolute must-have for me because it allowed me to display my tabs vertically and group them.

However, with Firefox now natively supporting vertical tabs and tab groups, I do no longer use this add-on. I would still recommend it to anyone who needs a more special configuration.