I love uBlock, but it’s not the first browser extension I install on my phone

As a committed Mozilla Firefox user on desktop and Android, I consistently install several extensions on my devices. uBlock Origin has a firm place on this list. This beloved content-blocking extension is like a digital pressure washer, blasting away content I don’t want to see from the web pages I visit. Despite its usefulness, it’s not the first browser extension I install on my personal device. That honor goes to one that packs the utility and extendibility of dozens of other extensions: a userscript manager called Violentmonkey.

For the uninitiated, userscripts are small snippets of code, usually JavaScript, that can modify the functionality or appearance of a web page. I’ll admit that sounds pretty vague, but it’s deliberately so. These scripts can accomplish a multitude of tasks, affect every site or specific pages, impact certain types of content, add or remove features, and even automate mundane tasks you encounter while browsing the web. I’ll run through a brief list of my favorite userscripts a little later, but for the purposes of this article, know that you can’t just install userscripts directly to your browser — you need a userscript manager to handle them. This is where Violentmonkey comes in.

There are plenty of userscript managers available for Firefox, Google Chrome on desktop, Microsoft Edge, and other browsers that support extensions. I previously used Tampermonkey but switched to Violentmonkey because it’s open source and transparent. Considering the nature of userscripts, this aspect is pretty important to me. Violentmonkey also makes finding scripts, installing them, and subsequent management a breeze.

Using it on a fully-fledged desktop browser, you wouldn’t think its design would translate well to the smaller Android screen, but it does. There are options to access popular userscript management sites like Greasyfork and OpenUserJS, inspect installed scripts and make edits, choose execution methods, enable or disable individual scripts, view their developers’ home pages, and much more. All this fits neatly on a mobile screen, making navigation clear and intuitive.

So, how do you use userscripts? First, you’ll need a browser that supports extensions — for me, that’s Firefox. Next, install Violentmonkey. From here, you can jump into the world of userscripts directly through the extension itself.

The usefulness of Violentmonkey isn’t the extension itself but rather the features it enables through the userscripts you install. I don’t use as many as I used to, but the three I gravitate towards make my life a little easier.

Infinite scrolling capabilities were my first glimpse of the potential of userscripts many years ago. While I can’t remember the original userscript I used, Pagetual is the modern-day equivalent. In short, it enables perpetual scrolling on supported websites, completely negating the need to interact with page numbers or next buttons to progress. Scroll, and the subsequent page loads. I love it on desktop, but it’s even more helpful on mobile. It ensures I never need to use two hands to scroll through a forum.

When comparing which terrible movies to watch on a cozy Saturday night, IMDb Tomatoes is a useful tool. As its name hints, the userscript places Rotten Tomatoes scores on IMDb, allowing quick comparisons. It’s far simpler than Pagetual, but it saves me a Google Search and a subsequent page load whenever I want to check a movie or series rating. One minor quirk requires me to load the full desktop IMDb site for the script to trigger, but I’m hoping to fix this manually at some point.

Then there’s Google Hit Hider, which makes search engines and their contemporaries more tolerable. It adds a box next to each search result that lets you block that specific domain from appearing in future results. Again, you’ll need to load the desktop versions of these sites, but it also works with DuckDuckGo and Bing.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, too. There are so many useful userscripts out there.

However, before diving headfirst into Violentmonkey and the wonderful world of userscripts, you must know a few things. Like the internet in general, userscripts are not inherently dangerous, but they do have the potential to be. The onus is to ensure you only install scripts you trust.

It’s also important to avoid using a browser with userscripts installed for mission-critical work, like banking, filing your taxes, or any task that requires personal information. I’m happy to keep userscripts locked to Firefox as it’s my general catch-all browser for everyday tasks. For more personal browsing needs, I’ll hop onto Chrome or DuckDuckGo. If you’re interested in trying Violentmonkey, I’d suggest you consider a similar arrangement, too.

Some userscripts are just too useful to use the web without, so Violentmonkey is the first Firefox extension I install on my phone. These extensions help me endlessly browse forums, view images, compare movie ratings, and control Google Search results, and Violentmonkey makes managing these features super simple.