I'm stopping myself to burn life on YouTube. And you now can too.

I’ve been fighting YouTube (actually myself) for several years now. I tried unsubscribing all the channels but that only left more space for the bullshit YouTube would suggest to me. I tried outright blocking the whole domain but then I needed to watch some video for work, education or fun. I tried setting a timer that notified me after spending some time on YouTube but it usually rings in a middle of a video and I couldn’t resist just dismissing it.

I needed more nuanced solution. One that would let me use YouTube to watch a video from time to time but, at the same time, would shield me from the addictive recommendations. I couldn’t find one so I wrote it. It’s available on the Firefox’s Addon Library and the code* is open sourced at GitHub. Feel free to submit a pull request or issue if you have any ideas how to make it better.

The addon simply hides most things that are not necessary for watching a single video: all suggestions, including the ones in the player after a video ends; all videos on the homepage (and links to homepage as well); the menu with subscriptions and playlists and maybe few other things. It merely lets me search for and watch a video and read comments.

It has been working quite well for me. Now I have to figure out how to get it to Firefox on iOS.

*Only if you consider 14 lines of CSS to be a code.