How Can I Detect YouTube Page Navigation for Seamless HTML Insertion?

Detecting YouTube Page Navigation for Seamless HTML Insertion

Modifying the appearance of a YouTube page seamlessly can be challenging, especially when page navigation is involved. This becomes evident when a script works only after page refresh, but not when the site is navigated.

To address this issue, it's crucial to detect page navigation on YouTube. Unlike traditional web pages that reload upon navigation, YouTube replaces the history state, rendering content script reinjection ineffective.

Fortunately, several methods exist for detecting page transitions on YouTube:

1. Background Page or Service Worker Script

Use the webNavigation or tabs API in a background page or MV3 service worker script.

2. Content Script and navigatesuccess Event

Leverage a content script in modern Chrome that listens for the navigatesuccess event.

3. Content Script and YouTube's Navigation Event

YouTube has an event specifically for video navigation: yt-navigate-start. This event is ideal for detecting page transitions.

Implementation using yt-navigate-start

manifest.json

{
  "name": "YouTube Playlist Length",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "manifest_version": 2,
  "description": ".............",
  "content_scripts": [{
      "matches": [ "http://*.youtube.com/*" ],
      "js": [ "content.js" ],
      "run_at": "document_start"
  }]
}

content.js

document.addEventListener('yt-navigate-start', process);

if (document.body) process();
else document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', process);

function process() {
  // Code to alter the page
}

By using the yt-navigate-start event, the content script can detect page navigation and modify the HTML seamlessly, eliminating any delay or the need for page refresh.

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