Houndini skips and halts looping video backgrounds with a toolbar click or keyboard shortcut, and automatically skips YouTube ads the moment they appear. Houdini, now you see it, now you don't.
- Auto-skip YouTube ads — detects ads the moment they start and seeks past them instantly. Also watches for the skip button and clicks it automatically.
- Manual skip — click the toolbar icon or press Ctrl+B (Windows/Linux) / Command+B (Mac) to skip the currently playing video on any site.
- "Ad skipped" toast — a brief notification confirms when an ad has been skipped.
- Looping video backgrounds — pauses looping videos on websites that use them as decorative backgrounds.
Houndini is not available on the Chrome Web Store and must be installed manually.
- Download or clone this repository to your computer.
- Open Chrome and go to
chrome://extensions. - Enable Developer mode using the toggle in the top-right corner.
- Click Load unpacked.
- Select the
src/folder inside the downloaded repository. - The Houndini icon will appear in your Chrome toolbar. Pin it for easy access.
To update after pulling new changes: go to chrome://extensions and click the refresh icon on the Houndini card.
- Watches for YouTube's
ad-showingclass on the player and immediately seeks the ad video to its end. - Simultaneously watches the DOM for a skip button and clicks it the moment it appears.
- Shows an "Ad skipped" toast notification when an ad is bypassed.
- Finds the currently playing video on the page.
- Hulu / ABC News — sets playback rate to 16× (these sites block seeking due to DRM).
- All other sites — seeks the video to its end, then watches for and clicks any skip/close buttons that appear.
| Site | Auto-skip ads | Manual skip |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube | ✅ | ✅ |
| Hulu | — | ✅ (fast-forward) |
| ABC News | — | ✅ (fast-forward) |
| Any site with video | — | ✅ |
Made by Kent Widman.