In that spirit I have a userscript, ironically called Youtube HD[0], that with one edit sets the resolution to 'medium' ie 360p. On a laptop it's plenty for tal

In that spirit I have a userscript, ironically called Youtube HD[0], that with one edit sets the resolution to 'medium' ie 360p. On a laptop it's plenty for talking head content (the softening is nice actually), and I only find myself switching to 480p if there's small text on screen. It's a small thing, but as you say internet video is relatively heavy. To reduce my AI footprint I use the udm=14 trick[1] to kill AI in Google search. It generally gives better results too. For general web browsing the best single tip is running uBlock Origin. If you can master medium[2] or hard mode (which will require un-breaking/whitelisting sites) it saves more bandwidth and has better privacy.[3] To go all-out on bandwidth conservation, LocalCDN[4] and CleanURLs[5] are good. "Set it and forget it," improves privacy and load times, and saves a bit of energy. Sorry this got long. Cheers [0] https://greasyfork.org/whichen/scripts/23661-youtube-hd https://greasyfork.org/whichen/scripts/23661-youtube-hd [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-searchs-udm14-trick-lets-you-kill-ai-search-for-good/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-searchs-udm14... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1j5tktg/ublock_origin_medium_mode_is_incredible/ https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1j5tktg/ubloc... [3] https://github.com/gorhill/ublock/wiki/Blocking-mode https://github.com/gorhill/ublock/wiki/Blocking-mode [4] https://www.localcdn.org/ https://www.localcdn.org/ [5] https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon