Reviews & Comments of Alternate Player for Twitch.tv chrome extension

Wish 7tv worked on this but it's the issue on their side Note: Yeah a bunch of functions broke but honestly they're not that needed, just the de-bloat is that good. Default twitch has too much going on. And I think the delay is slightly lower with my custom setting. I switch back only for 7tv emotes and once in a while when I need to make a clip

Feature-rich but dramatically increases stream delay, from ~2 seconds to almost 9 seconds.

Please, add support for videos.

It just freezes when ads should be playing, so you have to keep refreshing it. It's barely worth the extra effort.

Virtually every feature this extension offers no longer works as of Feb 2023.

request: BTTV emote menu button works BUT 7TV emote menu button does not work while using this extension. please add this feature!

More than doubles stream delay

Raids move the chat to right channel, but not the Stream itself. Otherwise, very nice to avoid ads!

"Hiding ads" takes too long. Would be nice if I didnt have to switch chat to dark mode every time I open a stream.

Likes: -Has a setting for bad connection quality. This increases the delay between stream & chat, but as someone with a very poor rural internet connection it's great. -Customizable colors. It doesn't really add anything feature-wise, but nice for the aesthetics. -Volume slider controlled with scroll. It decreases the volume to JUST ABOUT mute so you still show as a viewer. On the normal player it's kind of fiddly to get the volume down just enough to barely hear the stream but not mute it. Dislikes: -Raids don't work. I have to go back to the normal Twitch player to "follow the raid" from the streamer's page. -Ads make the stream buffer. In the upper left corner it says "Hiding Ads" but the screen just goes black until the ads are over. Kind of pointless, I may as well just watch the ads at that point. I have UBlock Origin installed as well which skips ads on the normal Twitch player. I will continue to use this extension for the "bad connection" setting as that's important to me, but it could really use some fixing up. Right now, there are more cons than pros for me overall.

I have been using this player for a few months now due to twitch discontinuing the desktop app (with they would bring it back), for some reason I was constantly getting connection errors with the twitch website itself and having to constantly reload streams. then I found this player and it worked great for the longest time. however lately i've found, at least in the last 2 to 3 months, I cannot make any stream clips with it or even follow a streamer, as all that appears is a red and white face like this : ( . I cannot figure out how to fix this and might end up switching back to dealing with the twitch website if this keeps up. I tried sending a bug report but I just kept getting a one line text page saying Access Denied.

i love this app :) the only things i want fixed is an easier way to go back to ur following and also somehow reducing the stream delay!

ao bloquear as propagandas o player trava e volta depois de uns 30/50 segundos

This is great! Thanks for putting it up and taking good care of it! <3

Works like a charm; only issues I have with it right now is how it doesn't support 7tv emotes and crashes when I change stream quality from audio

Not working - Every stream just says Broadcast ended

It's great, my go to and must have.

11-28-22 Everything working again. Multiple streams open and no ads.

How do I scroll? Scrolling thing is missing

So it seems that it is now pausing the stream when hiding adds? What is the point of this add on if you cant watch while it hides the adds?

Broken for over a week now.

Edit : back to being perfect, latest version of Opera GX no longer crashes with 2 tabs open. Latest version crashes on Opera GX when opening 2 streams in 2 differents tab

I'm not sure why all the reviews have vanished, but here's a relisting of what needs to be fixed: - clip function. - follow button from within the extension. - ad blocking feature. - send feedback to report bugs to the developer option. there are potentially more things needing to be fixed, but other than these, the extension works perfectly fine. - although still missing a few features / functions ( VOD support / fully functional raid system " currently only the chat swaps over " / whisper function / influenceable video overlay " basically allowing other extensions to apply filters and effects over the video to make it look better " / and support for stream addons " or extensions as the twitch page calls them, they're the things that allow for greater interactivity with the stream " ). i know it won't be easy to both fix and apply the missing parts to the extension, so just worry about fixing the extension for now, and then you can focus on improvements afterwards.

This extension works, I liked that before when there was an ad it went to 480Presolution and it would continue with the stream. Is there a way to get it to do that so that the stream can continue but at a lower quality while ads are played?

It's semi-broken now but I'm giving this 5 stars because it was just so, so great when it worked perfectly. I hope the dev is able to update it sometime - but even if not, thanks for the great extension that helped me for so long.

Clipping is broken rn

Uses a lot less resources than Twitch's own player. Ad blocking doesn't work unfortunately, it just shows a blank screen during an ad. A review mentioned pausing and playing during that portion would skip the ad, but that doesn't work for me.

Rating it "It was okay" because well, it WAS okay. Now, ads. Also, did you remove the option to close chat yet keep that resizable chat area open? It was helpful when watching on a lower resolution. Thanks.

This extension used to work seamlessly and wouldn't interrupt at all when there were ads on stream. It seems that Twitch is cracking down on ad blockers because Alternate Player now freezes the broadcast any time ads start, and resumes once the ads are over. It's still better than actually watching the ads, but I don't think Twitch will rest until they kill every ad blocking extension available.

Opening multible streams makes the extension to crash. Before for adblock the extension just lowered the resolution of the stream, now its just annoying black screen for the ad duration. Please update your extension mr. developer !

Opening multiple instances causes the extension to crash. Very annoying. It's been broken for about a month, so I'm looking for something else now.

*working on chrome as of 10 Sept'22 Great solution, letting streamers get ad revenue while not subjecting yourself to the annoying ads themselves. Sometimes blocking the ad means the stream stops for awhile instead of turning down the resolution, and it seems to introduce a bit of a delay vs the original twitch player, but both are a small price to pay really.

This no longer hides ads, just get blank screen. Also raids don't work (doesn't automatically switch when raiding).

Edit 6/9/22: Recent Chrome update has resolved the issue of not being able to load two players at once, no longer any problems. This extension is phenomenal, and I swear by it. Its reduction of CPU and RAM utilisation over the normal website player is very beneficial, and the ability to customise what is otherwise a very straightforward and reliable player is simple fantastic. If you want to save some system resources for other programs, Alternate Player is a great way for Twitch users to achieve this.

EDIT: recent chrome update fixes itself, you can open multiple instances like usual opening up second tab/stream on this player will immediately crash both tabs, hoping for fix

Used to be an essential extension for smooth Twitch viewing, but has since been left to die without fixes for app-breaking bugs. With just a single stream it works ok, but it is now impossible to run this extension in multiple tabs at once. Ads are also not blocked at all, with ads often just breaking the stream, forcing a refresh, which triggers more ads. At this point Twitch itself is a better experience in nearly every way.

Used to be great and slick, although constantly shaking a bell at me forcing me to read their updates even though I didn't much care to was obnoxious. With that said, it was a far better experience than trying to use Twitch's gaudy and unresponsive mess of a UI. However, it is no longer maintained and barely works anymore (and not just for ads, but overall), unfortunately.

please add 7TV support

I needed this extension in my life! 10 years of delayed chatting and forced-fed ads NOW NO MORE! To those having issues, disable all other Twitch extensions except for FrankerFaceZ (Addon suite for chat). Set your buffer settings manually. Hover your mouse over the options in the player for more info. Note: Personally using Opera GX but it should not make a difference

August 2022: So... yeah, this particular extension seems to have been left to rot at this point. Cannot recommend in its current state. August 2021: Still doesn't stop the initial tune-in advert interruptions, and forced-roll advert interruptions now also stop playback too. Doesn't show ads at least but it still hurts to see my go-to player for Twitch fall off the wayside. July 2021: So, this still has the issue of "have to wait on the initial tune-in advert" but doesn't ever seem to get interruption ads, thankfully. Hoping that gets fixed one day, as it's still a superior player to the default, but with other anti-Twitch-advert options out there, it leaves me torn between the choice of "superior player" or "no advert experience". June 2021: Button was fixed and it works again. And I got no idea why that Youssef guy just assumes I'd know anything about that lol but good luck on that buddy May 2021: So the extension still works but the button to access it isn't accessible. My personal solution is to just use Browser History to open the extension, then just replace "channel=" part manually with the channel I want to watch. Hope this gets fixed as default Twitch sucks, otherwise my 5-rating will remain at its new 3-rating. Jan 2020: They fixed what Twitch broke 2019: Initial review: This seems to block what advertisements got past uBlock Origin. Only complaint is the lack of a "block" option in the integrated chat.

It used to work ok but now it just black screens so you can't see anything, not worth using anymore as it doesn't work 90% of the time

Only able to have one twitch stream open at a time. Anytime I open another stream window it immediately crashes both windows.

Useless. Just makes the screen black, doesn't actually block anything. If you try to open up more than one stream it will crash your browser. Do not recommend.

No longer able to watch more than one stream on Chrome or Edge, the addon crashes the tab immediately on load of a second stream. Neither browser has updated, only the addon.

At this point, it's time to move on unless someone decides to update the extension. It's been great overall, but now that the update broke it, and there seems to be no update in site, I think it's time to move to other extensions that give you any functionality you're looking for from this one.

If you havent read any other reviews. Well this extension works fine. since its "an alternate viewer" you cant see special emotes like 7TV and such. its whatever. But apparently there was a chrome update that broke having multiple streams open and my god ive never realized this was going to be a problem until it was. "You never know how good something is until you dont have it"

Hope you can add a thing so we can go back to normal twitch from the extension page

Please fix being able to have multiple streams open at once. Please.

Good extension. Unfortunately this app hasn't been updated in half a year. With the most recent Chrome update tabs crash if more than one tab is open. Please fix update/fix.

Great format it automatically blows up the screen so its much better for viewing but half the time its a black screen because its hiding ads so it might be better to just not use it and get instant access the regular way

Works great. New minor issue. I can only have one twitch stream open or I get an error code.

Its working but... I mean, I really like the alternate player, but while it does "hide the ads" its still disrupts the streams which makes it no different than receiving them, Also crashes if there's more than 2 alternate streams are open.

it was great until yesterday and you cannot open 2 streams with alternate player, instantly both player crash. You can only watch one stream with the player since yesterday. If it gets fixed I will give 5 star.

Had to disable it because having more than one twitch stream tab open would cause all the twitch tabs to show a "aw snap" message. Hopefully it gets fixed!

would be a 5-star 7tv was compatible, can't see some of xqc's emotes without it. Sadge.

installs 3rd party search engine without asking

Is there a fix? It seems Chrome has completely disabled this from working now when I try and use it on twitch. In the addon list its all greyed out and isn't working at all as of 2-3 days ago.

Love it, but please add 7TV

disables ads but its almost impossible to watch any stream with the amount of freezing that happens. Sometimes you have to reload the page like 20 times for the stream to actually pop up. The chat is also delayed ahead by atleast 5 seconds so it kinda ruins the good moments.

Edited: Had to switch back to the default player disaster just to be able to watch without any sort of interuptions , using an another extension to stop ads from interupting the stream and also not block or pause the screen with hiding ads sort of message. If that is sorted out i will definetly be back to Alternate Player :)

Work perfectly, hide ads, and it's a better player overall .. the only problem is the windows explorer "Taskbar" crashes from frequently!

Please add support for 7TV.

Was awesome until today when it just completely stopped working. Looks like twitch patched. It just doesn't launch the player now.

Better than twitch original Player

Works better than expected. I have been using it for the last few weeks and had not even one issue. Awesome!

Thanks for this, it seems fantastic. Do you know if this has any effect on receiving DROPS ?

Couldn't find anywhere to ask this, so I guess I'll try here. I have a weird bug where the Alternative Player auto-start feature specifically doesn't work on ONE stream and only one stream - that being Kripparian's stream. I open ANY other twitch channel on the entire website? It works, the player auto-starts. I open Kripps? Nah. I gotta click the "5" button manually every time. Very frustrating as I watch him quite a lot. I have no idea when it started, but I first noticed it maybe a week ago or so maybe? I can't explain why it only effects ONE stream. Anyone ever had this? As I had to rate the extension to ask this, I gave it 5 stars because I literally couldn't watch Twitch without this lol.

Finally a player that doesn't require tons of resources and isn't buggy at all

Could you add an option in the chat setting where we could toggle chat dark mode on and off? The iframe uses a chat popout url that is always in light mode (I have toggle dark mode everytime I open a new stream). The iframe for the chat would look something like this: <iframe src="https://www.twitch.tv/popout/:channel/chat?darkpopout {...rest} >. Great extension btw! Keep up the good work.

Been using it for so long. I really like it. Although it doesn't always remove ads, I like it's just black... HATE ads, and I don't want to see them Something I need though, is that Private Message icon you have on the standard twitch.. not sure if it's just me who can't find it...

I never knew you could change Twitch's default player... how awesome, lots of features too to play around with. Although some things are still in Russian... could be worse. It also doesn't seem to be as fast as the default player with low latency but it's close enough once you get all the buffer settings lowered. Also, ads aren't really "blocked" but just black screened while a notification pops up in the corner saying "ad blocked" or something. I suppose it's better than nothing but could just pair it with another Twitch ad-blocker, or just subscribe ? I prefer using alternate players (e.g. PotPlayer or YouTube Enhancer) as it lowers CPU and RAM usage for me, drives me nuts when my tab freezes for no reason other than it's overflowing all over the place. Haven't had any issues with this player yet, been a nice change from the usual. I wish it had support for VOD's and the player.twitch.tv URL, still able to work around. For an old Russian extension, it's great?

Great for doing what it's designed to do, but I'm unsure how it's breaking the 7TV extension and I like seeing the emotes so this will be disabled until it's updated to not break 7TV extension. I hope this is still being supported as it doesn't look like there are any recent comments.

So far so good, Is it possible to add an option to add a sound when a prediction, a bet, is launched ?

Legit have used this for 4 years. They always update it everytime to work around the big guy. Since the big guy likes to update their ad algo alot lated with the uprise in $ earned from such ads. in my experience if you just keep the app installed they will slowly add in work arounds into their proxy. Its truely a heartfelt project and would recommend it to any friend. Adds maybe 3-4 secs of delay from steam to chat. Which is like the old days. Most people experience the new delay of 1-2 secs. Which is another experience in itself I recommend, But only to the streams you wanna support.

I have been having this issue for a few months now. It began to stop working on some channels. When I manually start it, it would work but the chat is gone and it's on fullscreen(of the browser, no way to change it). Spent about an hour googling but not much came up. Anyone got a solution?

This is such a great app for live streams, but I almost exclusively only watch VODS. I'm wondering if there's any chance to add VOD support? I've seen the request in multiple other reviews.

plz add 7tv support smile :)

OMG COOL !

I like the extension, needed it cause we have limited wifi here, so watching with the alternate player was really useful, although, it seems like there's no way to enable stream extensions, the ones the streamer put on the stream, like StreamLab, Is there a way to enable them, or can you add the ability to enable them? would be really useful.

So much faster than the default player

I modified your extension to work with TTV LOL until I was forced to update. Your method worked for a while now it doesn't block ads well. You should just figure out how to get other ad blocking extensions to work with your extension instead of trying to battle twitch's updates.

is there another update coming soon? i think the ads are starting to disrupt the playback again. it has been stopping the playback because of ads for a few weeks now, forcing refresh several times until it works. overall it works great.

Ads no longer reduces quality, instead the stream pauses or some times goes to black screen instead until the ads are over

There is one problem. That is, when you're watching a livestream there is no way to see who else is currently live without leaving the stream. If you're watching one stream and your favorite streamer goes live, you're gonna wanna know. Please add the option to display who (that you're following) is currently live; without having to leave the stream you're watching.

Great extension, thank you for all your hard work. The most recent update of twitch has caused black screen instead of reduced resolution for ads, but regardless, I will continue to use and support this extension. Highly recommend for anyone wanting to watch Twitch.

Sadly Twitch has fixed the in-built adblock once again and we're getting blackscreens during ads again rather than lowered quality. Hope you can fix it and find a work around soon

This a fantastic player, you should definitely consider using this if you are having any playback issues. I used to only be able to 720p streams with it stopping constantly, not I can play fully-fleged 1080p streams without any stutters. The player is nicely customizable with some color options, custom colors would be a nice addition. The built in adblocker works fantastically. The pop-out player works really well. The settings are perfect for people who know how buffering and playback settings work. The chat can also be nicely placed on other side of the screen, a really cool feature. Overall, a fantastic chrome extension, would recommend it to anyone, even people not having any issues with Twitch!

Have noticed new issue that started happening couple days back. When I enable alternate the video no longer fits the strim to full screen. This becomes issue as some strimers strim below 1080p leaving much unused screen. When I turn this addon off the vanilla twitch stretches the stream to full screen just like it used to.

Unfortunately, I need this extension because I can't afford subs and the Twitch ad system is annoying and disruptive. However, this is a very nifty piece of coding that so far works very well. I will definitely consider supporting it with a donation.

Great extension. Really great alternative player. Only docking a star since I had to use Twitch Now since there's no sidebar. Would be nice if this dev can work to get Twitch Now integrated natively or allow a button to add the native "Followed Channels" sidebar like they did with the Chat sidebar, so we don't have to install a second extension seperately. UPDATE: Would be nice if they added the ability to whisper as well. Seems completely devoid of that feature.

Wonderful extension. One feature request would be the option to delay chat. I always feel like chat start reacting to what happens on stream ahead of when I see it. Being able to sync that up with a timed delay would be awesome, but no clue if you could implement that. Thanks! @Alexander Choporov

Why does it not work all for me?

I downloaded this because I was fed up with the amount of ads I was getting, and this works as described. No ads, less lag and no more random video player crashing/freezing. Only thing is that you have to get used to slightly changed layout of title and description of streams. 10/10 twitch extension

Normal playback constantly crashes (Mac pro 64gb ram) - most important feature to me is instant replay and this is a 50/50 toss up on whether it will playback 3 seconds or the designated 60 so this extension is useless. Owner replies with cheeky support responses - not helpful man..

Any chance you could ad ability to watch ads - on or off? and the ability to sub to a streamer with prime?

would be great if it defaulted to the best quality/lowest stream delay. also 7tv doesnt work with it yet. 3/2/2022(american)

Great extention. Can you please consider to include the "popout chat' button when the extention is enabled? Currently I have to turn the extention off each time to acess this from the chat settings cogwheel. Appreciate it.

Great job on hiding ads.

Really a great and concise extension. I loved the player and for me,at least, it is much better, more fluid than the default one. I think the one con is that the video won't follow a raid, just the chat, forcing you to to a little workaround pasting the handle's raided channel on the raider one in the address bar.

Overall really good with Broadcast. If you make this work with VODs, I'll give 5 star rating instead of 4.

Only minus is that I can't seem to use 7TV so some emotes in chat don't work.

Works so well, I cannot thank you enough for hiding 7 ads in a row. Thank you!!

Good but please add support for 7tv emotes in chat

Does not work anymore.

What was the main strategy for making it less laggy (use less RAM)? Did you find out what in particular was critically bad in the original?

Great add-on! Please change the blinking "hiding ads" or give us a choice to remove it. It is annoying and distracting

Amazing now that it added full ad block.

As of today the extension seems to cause buffering randomly about every 10 seconds during a stream, as soon as I switch the extension off the stream has no issues.

would be perfect if chat supported 7tv emotes as well, hope devs decide to add that feature.

Not working anymore, sent an email and hopefully the dev will get back to me. Just shows a huge red screen when I try to watch any live streams.

The best Twitch extension. It makes the experience so much more enjoyable. It can't always block the ads though, seems to be an ongoing battle.

Love this. Removes ads just fine, and actually gives a much easier on the eyes way of watching twitch! Is there any way to do subscriptions/use prime subs while using Alternate? I would love to NOT have to go back to the main twitch page to do subs/prime subs.

Please enable the extension during watching VODS Thanks! Love your work

The player is amazing and works really well for me. My only issue is with the adblocking. Technically it does "block" ads but not like how you can block ads on the official Twitch player, as it only just blacks your screen out for the entire duration in which the ads would be playing for. So you kinda just sit there looking at a black screen waiting for the ads you're not even viewing to run out to get back to the stream. Is there any plans to integrate actual adblocking in the future? Or is their some setting or method I may have looked past that can fix this?