I'm proposing a unified thread for collating all the tips and tricks that people use to manage their Internet connection. I'm particularly interested in those ideas which deal with annoyances or which make better use of expensive mobile bandwidth.

I use uBlock Origin for blocking ads:

https://ublockorigin.com/

It's free and open source and runs on Chrome, Edge, Opera and Firefox. It gives you a count of the number of items blocked on the current site, including their URLs, plus a cumulative historical count. At the moment my cumulative count is 1.1 million (11%).

I find animated GIFs annoying, so I use the "Animation Policy" extension to manage them:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/animation-policy/ncigbofjfbodhkaffojakplpmnleeoee

This gives me three options -- allow all animated images, allow once, or disable all.

"Have you ever been to a website that displays an overlay and masks the content with a transparent background before seeing its content ? 

This extension allows you to close easily those overlays with one click !"

BehindTheOverlay:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/behindtheoverlay/ljipkdpcjbmhkdjjmbbaggebcednbbme

"HTTPS Everywhere is an extension created by EFF and the Tor Project which automatically switches thousands of sites from insecure "http" to secure "https".  It will protect you against many forms of surveillance and account hijacking, and some forms of censorship."

HTTPS Everywhere:

https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

Greystone wrote:

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I run both Telstra and Optus mobile broadband accounts simultaneously through a load balancing router (TPLink R480T). This gives me consistent 50-75Mbps download and 25+ Mbps upload speeds. I also use CloudFlare DNS (1.1.1.2) through a VPN (Hotspot shield) for internet protection.

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Thanks. I was aware that CloudFlare had released a service for mobiles (WARP), but I wasn't aware that PCs and Macs were now supported.

BTW, Opera (Chromium-based) has an integrated VPN which can be toggled on and off. I find that the VPN sometimes interferes with my web browsing.

I confess I had never heard about load balancing routers, so I had to do some searching:

https://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/what-is-adsl-load-balancing

ISTM that load balancing may not provide the kind of benefit that is implied by your download/upload speeds, especially for single users.

Load balancing does not combine (or aggregate) broadband connections so it does not, for example, create a single 4 Mbps Internet connection from two 2 Mbps connections (so you wouldn't be able to watch a 3 Mbps high-definition streamed iPlayer video).

So why bother with load balancing? Well, the key benefit of a load-balancing router lies with its ability to support multiple devices/users at the same time to improve the overall experience of users. Load balancing allows devices (such as  PCs, notebooks, iPads and iPhones) to make use of the capacity of more than two Internet connections at the same time.

Just for reference ...

https://www.hotspotshield.com/

https://1.1.1.1/

https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-1-1-1-1-for-families/ 

One of my favourite and most used browser features is custom searches. There are several ways to implement these, and they vary between browsers.

One way is to use the following extension:

Search-from-Popup-or-ContextMenu:

https://github.com/YoshifumiFuyuno/Search-from-Popup-or-ContextMenu/issues

For example, if I want to search Amazon and eBay for a "load-balancing router", I just highlight this term in the current thread and right-click it. I will then be presented with a context menu consisting of various search engine options, one of which is "Shop - Multiple Search". When I select this option, the browser opens two tabs, one for Amazon and the other for eBay. Each tab prefills the search bar with the desired product.

Microsoft Edge has a search engine feature built in. I have bookmarked the relevant Settings page:

edge://settings/searchEngines

You can define your own search engine, or allow the browser to automatically create it for you. 

For example, I often need to find a manual, and to this end I use Google's advanced search. I use the following URL for my custom search engine, and give it a keyword of "gm". The browser automatically replaces "%s" with my search term(s).

https://www.google.com/search?q=filetype%3Apdf+manual+OR+guide+OR+instructions+%s

Now all I do is type "gm my_search_terms" in Edge's address bar.

I use the "IP Address and Domain Information" extension to display information about the web site I am viewing, and also my own IP address.

https://dnslytics.com/browser-extensions-addons-accelerators

I also use Tampermonkey as a userscript manager for several custom scripts:

http://www.tampermonkey.net/

There are thousands (?) of scripts which strip annoyances from web sites, or add features to your browser.

https://www.tampermonkey.net/scripts.php

I use this translator (by SailorMax):

https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/translator/cdkmohnpfdennnemmjekmmiibgfddako

https://addons.opera.com/ja/extensions/details/translator/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/translator_extension/

This extension is useful in finding archived copies of dead links at the Wayback Machine and other places:

https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/view-page-archive-cache/

Web Archives is an Opera extension which helps you to find archived and cached versions of web pages. Searches can be initiated from the right-click context menu and the browser toolbar.

The Wayback Machine web site provides extensions and applications for various browsers.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wayback-machine/fpnmgdkabkmnadcjpehmlllkndpkmiak?hl=en-US">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wayback-machine/fpnmgdkabkmnadcjpehmlllkndpkmiak?hl=en-US

https://safari-extensions.apple.com/details/?id=archive.org.waybackmachine-ZSFX78H3ZT

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wayback-machine/id1201888313

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.archive.waybackmachine&hl=en_US

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/

Thanks for  "Behind the Overlay"

There is a version for Firefox as well, best add on I've seen for a while

To prevent media content from autoplaying in Edge (Chrome), one first needs to go here:

 edge://flags/#edge-autoplay-user-setting-block-option

Select Enable for "Show block option in autoplay settings". "If enabled, block will appear as an option in media autoplay settings. -- Mac, Windows, Linux, Android."

The browser must be restarted for this option to take effect. Then go to . . .

 edge://settings/content

Select Site permissions / Media autoplay, and select Block for "Control if audio and video play automatically on sites".

This Chrome/Edge browser extension converts all Youtube links into "embedded" links. 

https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/youtube-embedded-player/dgaeeabmapmgpfjjngccikmeijilnfhi?hl=en-US

The "YouTube Embedded Player" extension enhances your YouTube browsing experience by allowing you to
seamlessly open YouTube videos in their embedded player format. 

This means you can enjoy videos without the distractions of the full YouTube website.

Wish I knew what you guys are talking about.

Instead of clicking on this ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB9MX22do0U

... and then being hit with ads and other YouTube videos, you can install the browser extension. Then, when you right-click on the link, you will see an option that offers to serve up the "embed version", in this case ...

https://www.youtube.com/embed/cB9MX22do0U

Cupie wrote:

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Wish I knew what you guys are talking about.

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Me too mate , it's way beyond me.

A "Better Viewer" extension for Chrome, Edge and Firefox:

https://github.com/Ademking/BetterViewer?tab=readme-ov-file

BetterViewer was designed as a replacement for the image viewing mode built into Firefox & Chrome-based web browsers.

Features

• Zoom in / Zoom Out / Reset
• Fullscreen
• Rotate Left / Rotate Right
• Flip Horizontal / Flip Vertical
• Crop Image
• Photo Editor (Adjust, Draw, Watermark, Filters, Finetune, Resize, Export As PNG, JPEG, JPG, WEBP)
• Download Image
• Upload Image to imgBB or imgur
• Color picker
• Image Details
• Change background color (Dark / Light / Blurred)
• Print Image
• Extract Text from Image
• Edit in Photopea
• Reverse Image Search
• QR Code Scanner
• Settings to customize Toolbar

Cupie wrote:

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Wish I knew what you guys are talking about.

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It's a language good for feeling younger and to stop the march of Dementia.

Cupie wrote:

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Wish I knew what you guys are talking about.

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 I wish I knew what they know.? I am a sort of a dinosaur with all this modern techo.

Jay&Dee