Videochat Extension

Crazy Week ends, possible auto-skip (blacklist, gender filter) return, and incoming Crazy Year.

Added 2025-02-17 13:49:59 +0000 UTC

So, the coding marathon that was supposed to accelerate Videochat Extension development during last week has come to an end. The idea was to focus 10-14 hours a day on this project and do something completely new or push forward in any way possible.

Did it succeed? Huge progress was made, but not very much visible on surface, so the answer is no. But the ground moved, active development will continue and you should expect regular releases in the near future.

I wanted to focus on visible changes, new features, but once again got stuck in the internal foundation, which turned out to be harder that expected and be blocking the implementation of the new features.

New Browser Mode implementation seems to be working well, and some UI changes for the good, but most progress is the internal foundation of webrtc monitoring that has not been published yet, but is very close.

You can't build a skyscraper on shaky ground.

But the good thing is that a lot of the hard stuff was dealt with last week, and in the coming weeks, the full overhaul of the monitoring system will be published. After that, the project will be filled with new features.

Possible auto-skip return.

Though there was no active development on Saturday and Sunday, nothing stopped the thinking process. There is a possibility that the ability to automate skips will return in the future, so blacklist and skipping based on gender or custom filters (wrong country/city) should come back in the future.

Why is it so difficult? We can't simply go around clicking buttons, as such clicks are marked in the browser as untrusted and can be used to reliably identify the use of third-party software. In the past, we used to trust sites, and it worked well enough for several years, but that’s no longer the case.

The solution being considered is AutoHotkey. It’s a commonly used, free, and open-source automation software for Windows that can address many of our issues, allowing to avoid writing custom software and instead rely on something that already exists and known to work great.

The idea is to start a local server using AutoHotkey and send commands to skip from the extension when, for example, you encounter a person on the blacklist or based on gender preferences.

A custom script that we will maintain will be able to receive such commands and act accordingly, such as performing skips for you, etc.

The hard part is that I would have to make it compatible with most sites, which use different ways to skip. Users will need to explain to the script which buttons should be pressed in order to skip. It's not that easy.

It should also work natively in Website Mode, allowing users to set an autoskip sequence. In this mode, Videochat Extension can attempt to click buttons using JavaScript at the user's own risk, so some compatibility should be ensured.

Additionally, it's Windows-only, so... not great, not terrible.

It is something we can explore in the future. There is already a OBS integration that sends commands to OBS, so why not try the same for AutoHotkey?

Incoming Crazy Year!

The last week was a step forward, but it is not the end of active development.

In the coming year (and particularly in the coming months), a LOT of time will be dedicated to this project, and you can expect regular releases as well as weekly and monthly progress updates.

Daily posts tend to distract from development, so they will be less frequent from now on. Changelogs will be published for each version, ensuring that no progress goes unnoticed.

Expect news soon!