A spoiler got through
What to do when Hide Spoilers misses something, blurs too much, or stops working on a site, and which cases it genuinely cannot cover.
· · 3 min read
A spoiler got through
Almost always a keyword problem rather than a fault. Work through these in order:
The spoiler didn't contain your keywords. The most common cause by a distance. Look at what you actually saw and ask which word in it you were blocking. Usually the answer is none, because the post named a character you hadn't added. Add it now.
It was in an image with no text. Nothing can read the inside of a thumbnail. If the surrounding title, caption or alt text doesn't carry the keyword, there's nothing to match on.
It was in a video you were already playing. Blurring applies to page content, not to frames of a video mid-playback.
The page loaded content after you scrolled. Feeds that load endlessly can occasionally show a moment of content before it's processed. Scrolling more slowly through a risky feed genuinely helps.
Too much is blurred
You've got a keyword that's too common. The usual suspects are single words like "finale", "dies", "ending", or "trailer".
Replace the single word with a phrase: season 3 finale instead of finale. See choosing keywords for the pattern.
If a whole page is blurred, one of your keywords is probably in the site's own navigation or headers.
It's not working on a site at all
Check the site is a normal web page. Some pages, browser settings screens, extension pages, and PDF viewers are outside what an extension can touch.
Reload the page after adding a keyword. New keywords apply to pages loaded after they're added.
Check the extension is enabled for that site in your browser's extension settings. Both Chrome and Safari let you restrict extensions per site, and it's easy to have done that by accident.
It stopped working after a site redesign
Sites change their markup, and a big redesign at a major platform can break detection until it's updated. Compatibility is improved continuously, but there's usually a gap between a redesign shipping and support catching up.
If a site broke, it's worth telling us which one. That's the fastest route to it being fixed.
Things it genuinely can't do
Not faults, just boundaries:
- Phone apps. Browser extension, so the native Twitter, YouTube and Reddit apps aren't covered.
- Messages from friends. No filter reaches your group chat.
- Content with no matching words. It matches what you give it. It doesn't understand what a spoiler is.
The honest summary: this cuts accidental spoilers down a long way. It doesn't make you immune, and anyone promising that is overselling.