If you spend a lot of time online, you’ve probably come across Greasemonkey before. For the uninitiated, Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which allows you to run little scripts which affect the pages you’re browsing. These scripts can do all sorts of useful things, like adding links to your favourite MP3 store in Last.fm or hiding YouTube comments to stop you wanting to poke your eyes out. There’s an amazing amount of Greasemonkey scripts out there and you can now use them on your Android phone.
TamperMonkey is the tool you need to get your favourite Greasemonkey scripts working on your Android phone. What’s more, it’s free and it makes it easy for you to search for your favourite scripts from Userscripts.
Getting TamperMonkey
TamperMonkey for Android can be found in the Android market and the free install only takes up 130KB of room. The application itself consists of a GUI for controlling and searching for new scripts, which doubles as a browser for you to use with your favourite scripts.
Using TamperMonkey
The application launches with a Google search page. Clicking on your menu button will take you to the various options for managing scripts, searching for scripts and browsing the Internet.
To install more scripts, the easiest way is to head to “Context” from the menu and click on “Get new scripts” and it will take you to the Userscripts webpage.
Browse away and click on install when you’ve found the script you want. TamperMonkey will verify that you really want to install the script and then you’re ready to roll.
Limitations & Thoughts
TamperMonkey is the first application to bring Greasemonkey capabilities to Android, which is a move many people are extremely happy about and will hopefully be copied and improved on by many other players in the near future. It’s still in beta, so it’s not entirely polished and perfect just yet. Not every script will function as hoped, which is to be expected in a beta application release.
The biggest limitation of TamperMonkey is that the Greasemonkey scripts will only work while you’re browsing in the TamperMonkey application. While that’s great if all you want is scripts running, most people have already put some thought into their favourite Android browser and have chosen something with far superior browsing features than TamperMonkey’s simple interface. Ideally, TamperMonkey should run in the background and aim to provide Greasemonkey script usage for users in whichever browser they happen to prefer. It’s a tough problem, but I’m sure someone will work out how to do it.
In the meantime, TamperMonkey has opened the doors to scripts in Android which is a promising step in the right direction and should be applauded. Now we’ll be watching eagerly to see how this develops.
More Greasemonkey Tips
You love Greasemonkey, right? Well, so do we:
- How To Hack Your Facebook Account with Greasemonkey & Javascript
- 9 Greasemonkey Scripts For More Productive Google Search
- 5 Useful Greasemonkey Scripts To Enhance Google Calendar
- 4 Common YouTube Annoyances & How To Get Rid Of Them With Userscripts
- 3 Great Ways To Tweak Your Google Reader Interface With Userscripts
Which Greasemonkey scripts do you think are best for mobile use? Do your favourite scripts work in Tampermonkey?
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