GitHub - mkornreich/old_reddit

Classic Layout for Reddit

▶ Install for Firefox (addons.mozilla.org)  ·  Chrome/Edge: load unpacked

A dependency-free browser extension — Firefox and Chrome / Chromium (Edge, Brave, Opera) — that rebuilds Reddit's frontend into old Reddit. It fetches each page from Reddit's JSON API and renders old Reddit's real archived HTML + CSS, then layers on RES-style power features.

Experimental & logged-in only. It replaces new Reddit's DOM on listing/comment/profile/search pages. It needs a logged-in Reddit session (Reddit blocks the anonymous JSON API); on any API error it falls back to normal Reddit rather than showing a broken page.

What it does:

• Old Reddit, rebuilt — subreddit & front-page listings, comment threads, user profiles, and search, in old Reddit's genuine 2019 HTML + CSS (from the Wayback archive) fed by the live JSON API. Full header (your karma/mail, subreddit bar), the subreddit sidebar with rules, the search box, sort tabs, and the time filter.
• Inline expandos — click [+] to reveal a post's image / video / gallery / self-text; galleries have prev/next.
• Infinite scroll (on by default) — RES "never-ending reddit".
• Keyboard navigation — j/k move, o/Enter open, x expand.
• Collapse comments — [–] on any comment; comments new since your last visit are flagged.
• Night mode — dark theme (off by default, toggle in the popup).
• Filters — hide posts by subreddit / user / domain / title keyword (Options).
• User tags & hover cards — colored labels on users; hover a name or subreddit for a quick info card.

Earlier versions were a lighter CSS skin of new Reddit (and before that, a redirect to old.reddit.com). Both were superseded by this full rebuild — see the git history / older releases if you want them.

Screenshots

Rendered from the extension's own output (its builders + the bundled old-Reddit stylesheet) with sample data — not a live-Reddit capture (Reddit blocks this build environment). In your browser it looks the same, with your feeds.

Subreddit listing — header, sidebar (search + rules), ranked posts, vote arrows, and per-post [+] expandos:

Comments — [–] collapse toggles, the sorted by menu, an inline preview.redd.it image, and the auto-loading "load more comments":

Night mode (optional dark theme):

Please read — this is an approximation

New Reddit is a fundamentally different page from old Reddit, so this skin shifts colours/typography/density and hides clutter rather than reproducing old Reddit exactly. It is inherently fragile:

• It can't restyle everything. Parts of new Reddit live inside closed Shadow DOM that no extension can reach. The skin injects into the main document and every open shadow root it can find; closed roots stay unstyled.
• It targets shreddit's custom-element tag names, slot names, and user-facing text (all more stable than Reddit's hashed class names), but Reddit can still break it on any deploy. When that happens, the fix is updating the selectors in rebuild.js / vendor/oldreddit.css.
• It will never be a pixel match for old.reddit.com.

Install on Firefox

Option 1 — Firefox Add-ons store (recommended, one click)

▶ Install from Firefox Add-ons (addons.mozilla.org)

1. Open the link above in Firefox.
2. Click Add to Firefox → Add.
3. Log in to Reddit (the extension reads Reddit's own API, which requires being signed in), then open any subreddit — e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics — and it renders in the classic layout.
4. Manage it any time from the toolbar button (quick toggles) or about:addons → Classic Layout for Reddit → Preferences (all settings + filters).

It's reviewed and signed by Mozilla, so it installs permanently and auto-updates.

Option 2 — From the signed .xpi (GitHub Releases)

1. Download the latest .xpi from the Releases page.
2. Install it either way:
   • Drag the .xpi onto any Firefox window → click Add, or
   • about:addons → the gear ⚙️ → Install Add-on From File… → pick the .xpi.

The .xpi is signed by Mozilla, so it installs permanently on regular Firefox and survives restarts.

Option 3 — Temporary, from source (no signing, great for hacking)

1. Clone this repo.
2. Open about:debugging → This Firefox → Load Temporary Add-on….
3. Select manifest.json in the repo.
4. It runs until you restart Firefox.

Option 4 — Build & sign it yourself

Firefox only installs a permanent add-on if it's signed by Mozilla. To produce your own signed .xpi with web-ext:

npm install
npm run lint
npm run sign:unlisted   # needs AMO API key + secret; produces a signed .xpi

AMO credentials (a JWT issuer + secret) come from https://addons.mozilla.org/developers/addon/api/key/, passed via the WEB_EXT_API_KEY / WEB_EXT_API_SECRET environment variables. Then install the resulting .xpi as in Option 1.

Note: requires Firefox 142+ (set in manifest.json).

Install on Chrome (and Edge / Brave / Opera)

There's no Chrome Web Store listing yet, so install it unpacked from a clone of this repo. Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Opera are all Chromium-based, so the same folder loads in every one of them — no separate build.

1. Clone or download this repo to a folder you'll keep in place (Chrome remembers the path; if you move or delete the folder, the extension breaks on next launch).
2. Open the extensions page by typing one of these in the address bar (these can't be clickable links):
   • Chrome: chrome://extensions
   • Edge: edge://extensions
   • Brave: brave://extensions
   • Opera: opera://extensions
3. Turn on Developer mode (toggle top-right on Chrome/Brave/Opera; left sidebar on Edge).
4. Click Load unpacked and select the repo folder (the one containing manifest.json — the folder itself, not a file).
5. Open https://www.reddit.com/r/pics — it should be restyled. Pin the toolbar button via the puzzle-piece 🧩 icon to toggle the skin, or use Details → Extension options.

Heads-up: unpacked extensions run in Developer mode. A browser update or profile reload can auto-disable a dev-mode extension — just re-enable it at chrome://extensions if that happens.

Polished option: publishing to the Chrome Web Store ($5 one-time developer fee) gives one-click installs that survive updates and need no Developer mode. Edge, Brave, and Opera can all install from the Chrome Web Store too.

Publishing to the Chrome Web Store

A ready-to-upload package is checked in at dist/old-reddit-skin-chrome-3.7.6.zip (manifest.json at the zip root, Chrome-validated, Firefox-only manifest keys stripped). To publish:

1. Register once at the Chrome Web Store developer dashboard (one-time $5 USD fee).
2. New item → upload the zip.
3. Fill in the listing: a ≥1280×800 screenshot, a description, and the privacy section — declare no data collected (the extension only reads Reddit pages to restyle them and stores a single on/off flag locally).
4. Submit for review.

To rebuild the zip after changes:

npm run build                                   # web-ext build -> web-ext-artifacts/*.zip
# then strip the Firefox key + repackage into dist/ (see the release build for exact steps)

The same zip also uploads to the free Edge Add-ons store if you ever want an Edge listing.

Experimental: Rebuild mode

Turn on Rebuild frontend (toolbar/options toggle) and, on a subreddit / front-page listing, a post's comments page, a user profile, or a search, the extension stops skinning new Reddit and instead rebuilds old Reddit's real frontend: it fetches the data from Reddit's JSON API and renders old Reddit's actual #siteTable of .thing.link items — ranks, vote arrows, thumbnails, taglines, comment counts, an expando button (click to reveal a post's image/video/gallery/self-text inline), sort tabs, next/prev paging, the time filter (top/controversial: past hour → all time), and the subreddit sidebar (description + rules, from /about.json + /about/rules.json) — styled by old Reddit's genuine archived stylesheet (vendor/oldreddit.css, the 2019 desktop CSS, bundled with its asset URLs rewritten to redditstatic.com).

How the data works: a content script does a same-origin fetch('…/.json', {credentials:'include'}) that rides your logged-in session.

Honest limitations (please read):

• Logged-in only. Reddit shut off unauthenticated .json in 2026, so logged-out visitors get 403. On any non-200 the extension falls back to letting normal Reddit render — it never leaves the page blank.
• Read-only. Voting, saving, posting, and commenting are not wired up (they need an OAuth write token). The arrows/buttons render for looks but are inert.
• Listings, comments, user profiles, and search. Post permalinks render old Reddit's comments page (nested tree, "sorted by" menu, "load more" via morechildren); /user/{name} renders the profile (overview/submitted/comments tabs + karma sidebar); /search renders results with sort/time filters. Every page carries the real old-Reddit header (username, karma, mail badge, the subreddit bar — from /api/me.json) and old Reddit's search box at the top of the sidebar, right where it belongs. Modtools, wiki, and settings still fall through to normal Reddit.
• Fragile & unsupported. The cookie .json path has no SLA; Reddit could close it. Media embeds/galleries, awards, and live updates aren't reproduced. Treat this as a proof-of-concept.

With Rebuild off (default), the extension is just the CSS skin described above.

Develop

npm install
npm start          # web-ext run: live-reloading test profile
npm run lint       # web-ext lint
npm run build      # distributable .zip in web-ext-artifacts/

Options

Click the toolbar button (or open the add-on's preferences in about:addons):

• Enable old Reddit — master on/off.
• Night mode — dark theme (off by default).
• Infinite scroll — auto-load the next page (on by default).
• Filters (Options page) — hide posts by subreddit / user / domain / title keyword.

Keyboard nav, comment collapse, hover cards, user tags, back-to-top and inline expandos are always on. All settings live in storage.local.

How it works

A single content script (common.js + rebuild.js) runs at document_start on www.reddit.com / sh.reddit.com:

• Route — common.js maps the URL to a listing / comments / user / search route (else it leaves new Reddit alone).
• Fetch — a same-origin fetch('{path}/.json', {credentials:'include'}) (and /api/me.json, /about.json, morechildren, …) rides your logged-in session.
• Render — rebuild.js builds old Reddit's real markup from the JSON and swaps out new Reddit's <body>, styled by vendor/oldreddit.css (the archived 2019 stylesheet, asset URLs rewritten to redditstatic.com).
• Enhance — keyboard nav, comment collapse, infinite scroll, night mode, filters, user tags, hover cards and inline expandos run on the rebuilt DOM.
• Fail safe — a visibility guard + 8s watchdog; any non-200 (e.g. logged-out 403) reveals normal Reddit instead of a blank page.

Files

No build step and no third-party runtime dependencies.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.