PlotVeilNot in the store yet. You can still run it.
PlotVeil is waiting on Chrome Web Store review. Until that clears, you install it yourself: download the ZIP, unzip it, and load the folder as an unpacked extension. Five minutes, no account.
Two things come with this route, and neither is a bug. Chrome will show a bubble on startup asking you to disable extensions running in developer mode: leave PlotVeil enabled and close it. And an unpacked extension does not update itself, so a new version means downloading and loading it again.
Install it
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Download and unzip the file.
You should end up with a folder that has
manifest.jsondirectly inside it. Put that folder somewhere permanent, next to your other tools rather than in Downloads. Chrome reads the extension from this path every time it starts, and deleting the folder uninstalls PlotVeil. -
Open the extensions page.
Paste
chrome://extensionsinto the address bar. Through the menu it is the three dots, Extensions, Manage Extensions. -
Turn on Developer mode.
The switch is in the top right of that page.
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Click Load unpacked, then pick the folder.
Select the folder that contains
manifest.json, not the one above it. PlotVeil appears in the list with the Veil Keeper icon. -
Pin it and reload YouTube.
Click the puzzle piece in the toolbar and pin PlotVeil so you can see the Keeper's state. Reload any YouTube tab you already had open, then play a video: the comments arrive covered.
If something goes wrong
"Manifest file is missing or unreadable"
You picked the wrong folder. Go one level deeper, into the folder where manifest.json sits.
Comments are not covered
Reload the tab. PlotVeil attaches when the page loads, so tabs opened before the install stay untouched. If comments are still bare, open the popup and check that protection is on for that channel.
Other browsers
Edge, Brave, Arc, Opera and the rest of Chromium take the same ZIP through the same steps, at edge://extensions, brave://extensions and so on. Firefox and Safari need a different build and are not supported today.
Check the file first
You are about to give an extension read access to youtube.com, so verify you got the file this page describes. The SHA-256 of the current ZIP is:
f75a3f0b5ef9a21333403806f6441debf0270a464ba1e380d6a963fc6f6e3101On macOS or Linux run shasum -a 256 plotveil-chrome.zip. On Windows run certutil -hashfile plotveil-chrome.zip SHA256. What PlotVeil sends once it is running is on the privacy page.
When the store approves it
This page will point at the Chrome Web Store instead, and the store version will update itself. Switching over means removing the unpacked copy from chrome://extensions, deleting the folder, then installing from the store. Settings do not carry across: Chrome treats the two as separate extensions, so you will set your sensitivity and protected works again.
To remove PlotVeil at any point, click Remove on chrome://extensions and delete the folder.