The extension no longer restyles the pages it runs on
This release fixes a problem where TubeSpanner was changing the appearance of the websites it runs on, and a set of related problems where those websites were changing the appearance of the TubeSpanner panel.
Patch Bug Fixes
Pages are no longer left unreadable. The extension was setting the text colour on every page it ran on, so any site that let its text inherit that colour turned white on white. YouTube's terms and policy pages and StreamYard were where it showed most, but every site the extension loads on was affected. Nothing outside the TubeSpanner panel is styled now.
The section menu keeps its icons when collapsed. On some YouTube pages every icon except the one you were on was pushed outside the collapsed menu, which left it looking empty apart from a single button.
The panel looks the same wherever you open it. Spacing, and the alignment of the account and close buttons in the panel header, were being decided by whichever page the panel was open on, so the same panel did not quite match itself between Studio and the rest of YouTube.
The Viewers icon matches the rest of the menu. It was rendering smaller than every other icon beside it.
Patch Breaking Changes
None.
Patch Upgrade Notes
Chrome, Firefox and Edge update automatically through your browser's extension store. No user action is required.
Fixes for the panel header and the section menu
Two fixes for problems introduced in 7.5.7, both on the parts of the panel you use to get anywhere.
Patch Bug Fixes
The account menu opens as a menu again. In 7.5.7 it could fill the whole panel with an oversized logo instead of opening, which also blocked the way through to your dashboard, your account settings and signing out.
The highlight showing which section you are in no longer cuts across the icon. It stopped short on Windows and Linux, where a scrollbar takes up room that it does not take on a Mac, so the marker ran through the middle of the icon rather than sitting behind it.
Patch Improvements
Maintenance is now something the extension tells you about. When TubeSpanner is down, signing in and anything that needs your account will not work. Until now the extension simply failed, which looked like the extension itself being broken. It now says what is happening, keeps checking, and clears itself as soon as we are back, with no reload. Spanners tells you some terrible jokes while you wait.
Patch Breaking Changes
None.
Patch Upgrade Notes
Chrome, Firefox and Edge update automatically through your browser's extension store. No user action is required.
The social composer, rebuilt to match the web app
The biggest change in this release is the social post composer, which now works the way the one on the web app does. Alongside it, several things that were quietly losing your work or scheduling posts at the wrong time have been fixed.
Patch Improvements
The composer follows the order you work in. Writing sits on the left with who the post is for underneath it, and the calendar and scheduling sit on the right. Images, links and videos attach from the composer itself rather than from a separate block of fields below it, and whatever you have attached is listed underneath where you can remove it.
TubeSpanner can write the post for you. Give it a few words or attach a video, press Write this for me, and it drafts from what you have. Choose a target viewer first and the post is written to speak to that person rather than in general.
Scheduling says what it will do before it does it. Publish now, schedule once, or repeat are three plain choices, and only the settings belonging to your choice are shown. An empty day on the calendar offers to take your post and tells you the date it would go out on.
Saving and attaching are separate in the Upload Assistant. Saving a description used to create and bind a project as a hidden side effect, so the same button did different things depending on whether a project already existed. Attaching is now its own action, and your saved descriptions are called that everywhere, matching the dashboard.
Toolbox sits directly after Home. It holds every tool and was sitting second from the bottom, where it was being read as the least important thing in the list.
Panels, cards and the section menu now use the same frosted surface as the web app, in both light and dark themes.
Patch Bug Fixes
Posts can no longer be scheduled in the past, and simply looking at a day on the calendar no longer schedules anything. Browsing to a date used to quietly set your post to go out at midnight that day, and a post with no schedule described itself as going out on the 1st of January.
Descriptions in the Upload Assistant survive leaving the page. They were only ever held in memory, so a refresh, or opening the video in another tab, lost the work. That is what looked like the field clearing itself.
The switches for choosing which icons appear on the bar now work. They could not be turned on or off at all, and any change that did get through was forgotten on reload.
Signing in no longer signs you back out. A check running the moment you arrived could end the session it had just started.
New installs get a welcome, and can create an account. The welcome was built somewhere only signed-in people could reach, so nobody had ever seen it, and a first run had no way to sign up.
Patch Breaking Changes
None.
Patch Upgrade Notes
Chrome, Firefox and Edge update automatically through your browser's extension store. No user action is required.
Patch Status
Stable
Colours that were missing now show, and follow your theme
A tidy-up release. Several parts of TubeSpanner were asking for a colour by a name that did not exist, so they rendered with no colour at all, and a few places inside YouTube's own pages had a light colour pinned on regardless of your theme.
Patch Bug Fixes
The sign-in form has its colours back. Its text and background were both being set from names that were never defined, so they fell back to whatever happened to be inherited. Same cause in parts of the popup, the colour picker and the competitor list.
Dark mode is respected inside YouTube. Where TubeSpanner adds buttons and panels to YouTube's own pages, a few of them had a fixed light colour, which showed as near black text on a dark page. They now take YouTube's colour, so they follow whichever theme you are using.
Patch Improvements
None in this release.
Patch Breaking Changes
None.
Patch Upgrade Notes
Chrome, Firefox and Edge update automatically through your browser's extension store. No user action is required.
Patch Status
Stable
Kim can see your channel, and act on it
Kim is the same assistant in the extension as she is on the web, and she can now see your channel and do things in it rather than only talk about it.
Patch Improvements
One Kim, in both places. She has her face, she remembers what you have already said in the conversation, and she can act on your channel when you ask: saving an idea, starting a video project, or drafting a script. Anything she creates is listed under her reply, so you always know what has landed in your account.
She can see your channel. Kim answers with your actual numbers and names your actual videos. Ask what to do next and she points at a specific video by name, instead of describing one she could not identify or asking you to go and find the title for her.
Reaching your Kim limit is answered in the conversation. She explains it in her own words with the way to continue attached, rather than a pop-up over the top of the thing you were doing.
Release notes read properly. The About window centred them, which left the eye no edge to return to and stopped the bulleted list looking like a list.
Patch Bug Fixes
Kim no longer tells you to install the extension you are already using. It was the top recommendation for everyone, because nothing had ever told TubeSpanner the extension was there. It does now.
Patch Breaking Changes
None.
Patch Upgrade Notes
Chrome, Firefox and Edge update automatically through your browser's extension store. No user action is required.
Patch Status
Stable
See the whole grade scale on your title and keyword scores
Your scores now show the full grade scale rather than a row of faces, so you can see where you landed and how much room is left. Kim also has her name back in the extension.
Patch Improvements
The whole grade scale, with your grade on it. Title length, readability, sentiment, compelling elements and the keyword measures now show every band from F to A+, with yours marked and the rest dimmed. The old faces told you roughly how it felt; this tells you exactly where you are and what is still above you.
Kim is called Kim again. She was Ask TubeSpanner in the extension and Kim on the web, which made one assistant feel like two. Same helper, one name.
Patch Bug Fixes
None in this release.
Patch Breaking Changes
None.
Patch Upgrade Notes
Chrome, Firefox and Edge update automatically through your browser's extension store. No user action is required.
Patch Status
Stable
The TubeSpanner bar stays put, and channel setup works again
A round of fixes across the toolbar, setup, your home screen and the Video Preview Injector. The big one: the TubeSpanner bar could quietly disappear from a tab after a browser restart or an extension update, and only a brand new tab brought it back. That is fixed, along with channel setup failing to find your channel.
Patch Improvements
Start a free trial when you reach a limit. The plan limit message now offers a free trial as well as an upgrade, so you can carry on without paying first.
Add another social account from the share screen. An Add account option sits at the end of the platform tabs, so you do not have to hunt through settings.
Your profile menu stays open until you close it. Click your picture to open it, then click again or click away to close, instead of it vanishing the moment your mouse drifted off.
The match score reads as where you are, not a verdict. It describes where the videos you have made so far are landing and leaves room to change it, and it never shows as a red fail.
Preview a thumbnail with fewer steps. In the Video Preview Injector the title and channel name are now optional, so you can upload a thumbnail and preview it straight away.
Fewer needless confirmations. Skipping setup no longer asks twice, a missing title is a gentle notice rather than a pop-up, and deleting a project names the project and gives you a clear Cancel.
Patch Bug Fixes
The TubeSpanner bar stays where it should be. It could disappear from a tab after restarting your browser or updating the extension, and refreshing never brought it back, only opening a brand new tab did.
Setting up your channel works again. Typing your channel name or handle during setup now finds your channel, instead of reporting that it could not be found.
The latest TubeSpanner video on your home screen shows for everyone. It opens on YouTube when you click it, so it no longer comes up blank if you use an ad blocker or strict privacy settings.
Video Preview Injector: the tabs now show what they say they do, your preview appears at full size without squashing the video beside it, and if there are no videos on screen to swap it tells you instead of doing nothing.
Patch Breaking Changes
None.
Patch Upgrade Notes
Chrome and Firefox update automatically through your browser's extension store. No user action is required.
Patch Status
Stable
A clearer match score, and target viewers that stay true to what you describe
A round of refinements to the Viewers tools from the last update. Your target viewer now stays true to what you describe, the match score reads more plainly and sits inside Viewers where it belongs, and you can open your target in one tap to check it is right.
Patch Improvements
Your target viewer stays true to what you describe. Tell us who you want watching and that is who we build. Your channel's goal no longer quietly reshapes them into someone else.
A clearer match score, where it belongs. It now sits at the top of Viewers rather than on your home screen, and says in one plain sentence how close the people watching now are to the ones you want, with no bare percentage to chase.
Check your target in one tap. The match card has a Review your target button that opens the full profile, so you can make sure it is right.
Patch Bug Fixes
Your project checklist stays on one line. Script, Thumbnail, Description and Video no longer wrap onto a ragged second row on narrower screens.
Social preview icons show again when you schedule a post.
Patch Breaking Changes
None.
Patch Upgrade Notes
Chrome and Firefox update automatically through your browser's extension store. No user action is required.
Patch Status
Stable
Know who you want watching, and what to make for them
Viewers has been rebuilt around a single question: who do you want watching? Tell us in a sentence and we'll build them, then show you plainly how your videos differ from that and what to change. Getting video ideas is now one button, Projects is one list again, and every project shows what is still left to do.
Patch Improvements
Say who you want watching, in your own words. Describe the people you want in a sentence or two and we build the full picture for you. No form, no ten fields. If your channel is brand new, three quick questions are enough to make a start.
See what the gap means for your videos. Viewers now opens with one short paragraph explaining how the people watching now differ from the ones you want, and what to make more of because of it. The full side-by-side is still there if you want to check the working.
A match score on your home screen. See at a glance how close your videos are to reaching the people you're aiming for, with a plain line saying what would move it.
One picture of who's watching now. Instead of asking you to pick between three viewer profiles, we describe your audience as one group and tell you how tightly defined it is.
Aim your ideas at the people you want. One button takes the target you've set straight into Video ideas and generates against it.
More than one audience, if you need it. Keep several target viewers, name them for what they're for, and choose which one new ideas aim at. Tucked away, so it stays out of the way until you want it.
Change a target without starting again. Re-describe them and we'll rebuild, or edit individual details directly if you know exactly what you want to change.
Ideas in one click. Press Get video ideas and you get them. Topic, target viewer and category are all still there under Advanced if you want to steer it, but there is nothing to fill in first.
Pick the niche your channel is actually in. Video ideas now offers the full category list rather than assuming everyone is generic.
Compare ideas without opening them. Each idea shows its brief and both actions up front, so you can weigh ten of them at a glance. Saving keeps the idea where it is and the button reads Saved.
Projects is one list again. Everything you save shows up in it, instead of being filed across Ideas, Titles and Projects tabs that made your own work hard to find.
Every project shows what is left. Script, Thumbnail, Description and Video, each one a link straight to where that job gets done.
Scripts and videos without leaving Projects. Attach a script you have already written, picked out by how closely it matches, or generate a new one from the idea's title, brief and method. Link a video you have published, or upload a new one.
Homerun is now the feature it always was, with the finder and your competitors as two sections inside it. Competitors is a place to manage your channels rather than a dead end, and Homerun works whether or not you have set any up.
Your remaining ideas are on screen. How many you have left this month now sits next to your results.
Patch Bug Fixes
The topic you type into Video ideas is now actually used. Previously it was collected and ignored, so the ideas came back generic.
You can set a target viewer on a brand new channel. It used to be blocked until we had read your videos, which was backwards: the newest channel has the most need to say where it is heading.
The brief you write now reaches the script generator, so the script matches the idea you had.
An idea's method is kept when you save it.
The Description column shows your real YouTube description rather than your notes.
You are greeted by your channel name or your first name, instead of an internal username.
A search that finds nothing no longer collapses the panel to a sliver.
A channel that fails to load is no longer reported as not connected.
Newly connected channels now have their videos read in straight away, instead of nothing appearing until your next upload.
Buttons across the panel now meet contrast requirements in both light and dark mode.
Patch Breaking Changes
None.
Patch Upgrade Notes
Chrome and Firefox update automatically through your browser's extension store. No user action is required.
Patch Status
Stable
Auto Description now writes your tags too, plus clearer scores and starting points
Auto Description just got more useful: one click now fills a ready-to-paste description and a matching set of YouTube tags. Your title score shows its letter grade right in the circle, the score summary reads your real results, and Video ideas, Titles and Viewers open on clearer get-started panels.
Patch Improvements
Auto Description fills your tags. One click writes a ready-to-paste description and a matching set of YouTube tags, straight into the upload fields.
Grade in the score circle. Your title score now shows its letter grade inside the circle, with a tap to flip between the grade and the exact percentage.
A summary that reads your results. The score summary now reflects your actual scores and names the single weakest area to fix next, instead of a fixed explainer.
Clearer starting points. Video ideas, Title suggestions and Viewers open on a tidy get-started panel, and the Projects list points you to the right next step when a stage is empty.
Tidier upgrade prompt. It now shows how many you have left, with more consistent spacing and rounded corners across the panels.
Patch Bug Fixes
Auto Description no longer leaves fill-in-the-blank placeholders like [Insert Link] in the description, so what you get is ready to paste.
Fixed corner-rounding drift and mismatched icons on the upgrade prompt.
Patch Breaking Changes
None.
Patch Upgrade Notes
Chrome and Firefox update automatically through your browser's extension store. No user action is required.
Patch Status
Stable