Many Youtube users do not like the fact that Youtube videos start playing as soon as the video is opened. This objection has several reasons. The most prominent ones are that users with slow connections can experience pauses during playback as the video download speed is slower than the playback speed of the video. Another reason becomes apparent if users open multiple videos at once on Youtube. All of these videos start playing as soon as the page has loaded which is obviously not a good experience.

The Greasemonkey script Youtube Auto Buffer And Auto HD and Remove Ads offers a quick and unobtrusive solution to that problem and two additional ones.

Youtube videos will automatically buffer completely without playback. Users who want to do that manually need to press the pause button on each video so that the video is not played but the contents are buffered. The script automates that process.

The Greasemonkey script adds two additional features. The first will automatically load the HD version of the opened Youtube videos. That’s a feature that most Youtube scripts and add-ons provides. The second will remove those annoying ads that are displayed at the bottom of Youtube videos.

Some users reported that they got the script working not only in the Firefox web browser but also in Opera. Interested users can download it from the Userscripts website.