Brave and uBlock Origin: How to Block Website Clutter

Custom Filters to Remove Clutter from YouTube and Any Website

Can you browse without Shorts, AI-generated summaries, and unwanted banners? Yes, with patience and a couple of lines of code. The recipe has been circulating for weeks: switch to Brave or install uBlock Origin, open the filter settings, and manually block everything superfluous. It's not magic; it's CSS selectors.

Custom Filters from the Address Bar

Brave saves its filters at brave://settings/shields/filters, a screen with a developer mode that accepts handwritten rules. The syntax is simple: the domain, two hashtags, and the element selector. A single line, www.burbuja.info##div.bbotHero, removes the header block automatically generated by the page itself. Refresh, and it disappears. Another rule cuts off topic previews: www.burbuja.info##.embed-preview.

The problem is that website administrators change the code whenever they want. Then the filter stops working, and that's where the part that separates the curious from the rest begins: learning to inspect the HTML.

Learn to Inspect Code to Block Any Website

The procedure fits into three steps. Right-click on what bothers you, select 'Inspect', locate the container—a <div>, a <header>, an <article>—and paste its name into the filter list. In HTML, there are classes, marked with a dot, and identifiers, marked with a hashtag. A website's footer can be blocked the same way with domain##footer.p-footer as with domain###footer.footer. Yes, three hashtags in a row: two separate the domain, and the third calls the identifier.

The trap comes when the container uses generic classes. Some filters, when removing a suspicious block, leave entire sections empty and topics without messages. Those who have tried the quick route warn: it's better to aim precisely than to raze the entire tree.

---

YouTube Cleanup: Shorts, Dubbing, and Modules

YouTube accumulates layers: 'playable' videos, Shorts, newsletter subscription pop-ups, game modules. Many can be disabled from the filter list itself, without adding extensions. And here's the most repeated advice: the fewer browser add-ons you have, the better it works. That's why much of what extensions used to do is now being transferred to filtering rules.

Be careful with excess. It's warned that if too many rules are applied, YouTube stops loading videos, or a website loads partially.

Extensions That Survive Filtering

Four names appear again and again. Dark Reader for dark mode, Download Facebook Videos for downloading images and videos from Facebook—always deactivated until used—, No New Tabs to prevent links from opening new tabs, and Proton Pass as a password and 2FA key manager. The latter is free, although its premium version costs 36 euros per year.

When the Web Breaks and the Mobile is a Hell

Aggressive filtering has side effects. If a page fails, the solution is to go back to the list and uncheck the offending rule, or lower the browser shield, which by default blocks JavaScript, advertising, and trackers. On Android, it's possible to activate filters manually, but the small screen makes AI-generated blocks a difficult obstacle to dodge. There's also a limit to the silencing tools: the ignored user list is capped at 1000 users.

The day someone renames a CSS class, all this will fall apart, and you'll open the inspector again. The good news is that you now know where the button is. The bad news is that no one is going to stop putting things on the web.