Frequently Asked Questions

NihongoTube is a browser extension that filters YouTube to provide an immersive Japanese learning experience. It automatically hides non-Japanese video recommendations, comments, and other content so you can focus on Japanese immersion.

NihongoTube is perfect for Japanese language learners of all levels who want to use YouTube for immersion. Whether you're a beginner looking for N5 content or an advanced learner seeking challenging material, our JLPT level estimation feature helps you find content at your level.

NihongoTube is available for Chrome (and Chromium-based browsers like Edge, Brave, and Opera) and Firefox. We also support Firefox for Android, making it possible to enjoy Japanese immersion on your mobile device!

Yes! NihongoTube filters content across the entire YouTube platform, including the homepage, video pages, subscriptions, search results, shorts, gaming pages, channel pages, and even video endscreens. Some features may vary by page due to YouTube's different layouts.

The extension primarily uses the video title to detect Japanese content by looking for hiragana and katakana characters. This approach strikes a good balance between performance and effectiveness. We specifically avoid using kanji alone to prevent false positives from Chinese content.

JLPT level estimation analyzes video transcripts to estimate the difficulty level (N5 to N1) based on vocabulary and grammar patterns. This helps you find content appropriate for your current Japanese proficiency level. The estimates are displayed as badges on videos and recommendations.

Absolutely! The extension comes with extensive customization options accessible through the popup menu. You can toggle filtering for comments, specific types of recommendations, JLPT badges, and more. There's also a master toggle to quickly disable all filtering when needed.

The channel whitelist allows you to bypass filtering for specific channels. This is useful if you want to always see content from certain creators, even if they occasionally post non-Japanese videos. You can manage your whitelist from the extension settings.

Auto-navigation prevention automatically cancels YouTube's autoplay feature when it tries to play a non-Japanese video at the end of your current video. This keeps you immersed in Japanese content without interruption.

NihongoTube respects your privacy. The extension does not collect or share your personal data or browsing history. The only data that may be sent to our servers is anonymous JLPT estimate information (video IDs and difficulty estimates) to help improve the service for everyone. This feature can be opted out in settings.

To build resilience against YouTube API changes, JLPT estimates can be anonymously contributed to NihongoTube's servers. This crowdsourced data only contains video IDs and JLPT level estimates—no personal information whatsoever. You can opt out at any time in the extension settings.

The extension requires access to YouTube pages to filter content and storage permissions to save your settings. It does not require access to your browsing history or any other websites besides YouTube.

Yes! NihongoTube works on Firefox for Android. Simply install Firefox on your Android device, then install the NihongoTube extension from the Firefox Add-ons store. Mobile support includes core filtering features optimized for smaller screens.

Unfortunately, iOS does not currently allow full-featured browser extensions like NihongoTube. We recommend using the extension on desktop or Android devices for the best experience.

Yes! NihongoTube works perfectly alongside YouTube Premium. All filtering and immersion features are fully compatible with Premium accounts.