As a committed Mozilla Firefox user on desktop and Android, I consistently install several extensions on my devices. uBlock Origin has a firm place on this list. This beloved content-blocking extension is like a digital pressure washer, blasting away content I don’t want to see from the web pages I visit. Despite its usefulness, it’s not the first browser extension I install on my personal device. That honor goes to one that packs the utility and extendibility of dozens of other extensions: a userscript manager called Violentmonkey.
For the uninitiated, userscripts are small snippets of code, usually JavaScript, that can modify the functionality or appearance of a web page. I’ll admit that sounds pretty vague, but it’s deliberately so. These scripts can accomplish a multitude of tasks, affect every site or specific pages, impact certain types of content, add or remove features, and even automate mundane tasks you encounter while browsing the web. I’ll run through a brief list of my favorite userscripts a little later, but for the purposes of this article, know that you can’t just install userscripts directly to your browser — you need a userscript manager to handle them. This is where Violentmonkey comes in.