Do you want to download a complete Facebook album in one click? Gain unfair advantages on a browser game? View images and videos behind a URL without clicking on it? These are only a few of the functionalities we can add to most browsers, using Greasemonkey scripts.
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What is Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey is an extension that allows us to run custom scripts on any website, before or after the site is loaded. This enables us to make personalized changes, which will remain permanent for our browser.
The scripts are written in JavaScript, and they can be applied to a single page, a whole domain, or every page the browser visits, depending on the script.
There are currently hundreds of thousands ready-made Greasemonkey scripts we can download to add functionalities to websites such as Facebook, YouTube, eBay, Github, and more.
There are also many scripts for online games such as Grepolis, Kingdoms of Camelot, and even Farmville.
How to install add-ons for Greasemonkey scripts to any browser
The original Greasemonkey is an add-on for Mozilla Firefox, and we can install it as any other add-on.
Greasemonkey is not available for other browsers, but there are similar add-ons or extensions that can run Greasemonkey scripts.
There is Tampermonkey for Google Chrome...
...Violentmonkey for Opera...
...Ninjakit for Safari, and an alternative to Tampermonkey for Chrome...
...and a mobile Tampermonkey for Android.
The original Firefox's Greasemonkey has the highest compatibility with Greasemonkey scripts, but many of the most popular scripts will be compatible for all the different browser add-ons.
Where can I find Greasemonkey scripts?
For years, the one-stop-shop for Greasemonkey scripts was userscripts.org. Unfortunately, userscripts.org shut down for good in August 2014.
We can still find a static mirror of it on http://userscripts-mirror.org/, but it has limited functionality.
There are, however, some excellent userscripts.org alternatives.
GreasyFork
It's neither Greasy nor a Fork, but GreasyFork is home to nearly 8000 scripts, the most popular of which have tens of thousands of installs.
Kingdoms of Camelot is a very popular theme for Greasemonkey scripts on this website, but we will also find a large number of scripts for Facebook...
and an enormous list of specialized Greasemonkey scripts for other sites.
OpenUserJS
OpenUserJS is a much smaller website than GreasyFork, which currently has about 2200 Greasemonkey scripts.
Some of the scripts, though, are extremely popular, such as the Quack Toolsammlung script for the popular Grepolis browser strategy game.
The biggest group of Greasemonkey scripts on OpenUserJS is for YouTube, and we will also find scripts for userscripts.org and OpenUserJS themselves.
Are Greasemonkey scripts safe to install?
Greasemonkey scripts are pure JavaScript code, which is not as thoroughly checked as are the extension and add-ons in Chrome Store and Firefox.
That means it's entirely possible that some Greasemonkey scripts are malware.
If we stick to popular scripts with lots of reviews, we are probably safe, but we should avoid lesser-known scripts, or scripts that seem too good to be true.
Are Greasemonkey scripts legal?
Some scripts offer automation, such as liking everything on our Facebook wall, or adding functionality to online games.
Now, this isn't strictly illegal, in the sense that there is now government law against it. It can, however, violate the Terms of Service of a particular website, and this website has the right to ban our account, temporarily or permanently.
So, we should be careful, especially regarding online gaming, to avoid any nasty surprises.
To be continued: The best Greasemonkey scripts
In following guides, we will present the best Greasemonkey scripts for any different occasion, tried and tested by the PCsteps team.
Stay tuned!
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Thanks Angelo Kyritsis!
Glad you liked it, Rogerio.
I Installed Greasemonkey Scripts in Firefox and Opera:
I tried some scripts "youtube download "and "subtitles download "
NONE OF THESE WORKING
ABSOLUTELY FAILS
Many scripts written for YouTube and Facebook only work for a while.
A simple change in the website's code can render the script useless, and often the script creators don't care to update their scripts.