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javascriptgreasemonkeyuserscriptstampermonkeygreasemonkey-4

How to make a script redirect only once every time an appropriate page loads?

I'm writing a Tampermonkey script that I want to use to redirect from youtube.com/* to a YouTube channel address.

window.addEventListener ("load", LocalMain, false);

function LocalMain () {
    location.replace("https://www.youtube.com/channel/*");
}

When the script is running it redirects to the channel URL but then keeps running and continuously redirects.

Solution

  • The standard, much more efficient, and much faster performing way to do this kind of redirect is to tune the script's metadata to not even run on the redirected-to page.

    Also, use // @run-at document-start for even better response.

    So your script would become something like:

    // ==UserScript==
// @name        YouTube, Redirect to my channel
// @match       https://www.youtube.com/*
// @exclude     https://www.youtube.com/channel/*
// @run-at      document-start
// ==/UserScript==

location.replace("https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8VkNBOwvsTlFjoSnNSMmxw");

    Also, for such "broad spectrum" redirect scripts, consider using location.assign() so that you or your user can recover the original URL in the history in case of an overzealous redirect.