Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: NoSuggest – Watch YouTube without the recommendation algorithm

nosuggest.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 73 posts

Show HN: NoSuggest – Watch YouTube without the recommendation algorithm

#1

Post by VJ-2-108 »

NoSuggest is a quiet act of resistance against YouTube algorithms always trying to pull you into a loop of unlimited videos in turn into unlimited screen time. With unending side cards of videos, auto-play, what's next suggestions, YouTube shorts and notifications, users will be doom scrolling for many hours in a day.

I faced the same problem. Acknowledging that, not all content in YouTube is bad. There are educational videos, genuine news contents without political bias which is very hard to find outside YouTube and many other good relaxing, entertainment stuff.

NoSuggest lets you only follow the YouTube channels you like and removes all types of recommendation YouTube has. So you don't waste time on watching things which you never wanted to watch anyways.

UI is very simple. You add your favourite channels in "Channels" tab and latest 5 videos per channel excluding shorts would appear in "Feed" tab. "Search" tab is to search for specific videos to watch and "Saved" tab is to bookmark any video you want to watch later. Intention of NoSuggest is to provide whatever is necessary to extract whats good from YouTube all inside NoSuggest and leave out bad parts.

NoSuggest works in any devices. Install it as an app (PWA) in android and iPhone, or simply open in browser in laptops. No sign-in, no account creation or no card details. NoSuggest won't even ask your name. Total privacy for the users.

Parents can add the channels and save some educational videos and lock it with the pin for kids mode. Kids won't be able access unwanted additive contents inside NoSuggest.

Completely free, no string attached. Source available in Github through NoSuggest website.

I would love genuine feedback. Thank you very much for your attention on this matter.

Show HN: NoSuggest – Watch YouTube without the recommendation algorithm
nosuggest.com

Re: Show HN: NoSuggest – Watch YouTube without the recommendation algorithm

#3

Post by alarsama »

This is exactly what I have been looking for. It's way too easy to get lost in the auto-suggested videos and shorts on YouTube. It was also always a hassle keeping up a local Invidious instance up and running in my homelab.

Thank you so much for creating this! I'll try it out for a few days and provide feedback.

Re: Show HN: NoSuggest – Watch YouTube without the recommendation algorithm

#5

Post by VJ-2-108 »

doorpheus wrote: post #4

This is fantastic, I've been using the DF youtube browser extension for a while but will definitely start using this. It's great there's no accounts or sign-up needed.

Thank you! Yes, no account or sign-up to reduce any friction. Please provide feedback when you use it.

Re: Show HN: NoSuggest – Watch YouTube without the recommendation algorithm

#6

Post by VJ-2-108 »

alarsama wrote: post #3

This is exactly what I have been looking for. It's way too easy to get lost in the auto-suggested videos and shorts on YouTube. It was also always a hassle keeping up a local Invidious instance up and running in my homelab. Thank you so much for creating this! I'll try it out for a few days and provide feedback.

Glad to know you liked it. Thank you! Yes, please keep using it and provide feedback after using for few days.

Re: Show HN: NoSuggest – Watch YouTube without the recommendation algorithm

#7

Post by atema »

I like watching streams from a few authors, but I'm not interested in their videos. Your website now shows only videos. Could you also add streams? And it would also be useful to have a setting for hiding streams and videos - for people like me.

Another point: it would make sense to be able to access all videos from a channel rather than the last five videos.

And a small thing: the channels in the Channels tab are not clickable - seems counterintuitive.

Re: Show HN: NoSuggest – Watch YouTube without the recommendation algorithm

#8

Post by VJ-2-108 »

atema wrote: post #7

I like watching streams from a few authors, but I'm not interested in their videos. Your website now shows only videos. Could you also add streams? And it would also be useful to have a setting for hiding streams and videos - for people like me. Another point: it would make sense to be able to access all videos from a channel rather than the last five videos. And a small thing: the channels in the Channels tab are no…

Thank you for the detailed feedback. Really useful.

On streams: I never thought about it as an use-case. Thank you for bring it up. Will look into it.

Showing 5 videos/channel is intentional. Idea is to only surface latest videos and not re-create a scroll feed like Youtube. But if I get more feedback from users that it is too restrictive then I can easily make it to recent 10 or 15 videos. What do you feel as an appropriate number of recent videos per channel is?

Good catch on the channels tab. Currently it just manages your list. Tapping a channel to jump to their feed section is a neat idea though, will look into adding it.

Re: Show HN: NoSuggest – Watch YouTube without the recommendation algorithm

#9

Post by alarsama »

VJ-2-108 wrote: post #6
alarsama wrote: post #3

This is exactly what I have been looking for. It's way too easy to get lost in the auto-suggested videos and shorts on YouTube. It was also always a hassle keeping up a local Invidious instance up and running in my homelab. Thank you so much for creating this! I'll try it out for a few days and provide feedback.

Glad to know you liked it. Thank you! Yes, please keep using it and provide feedback after using for few days.

Some things I noticed right off the bat:

- I'd recommend adding a way to add multiple channels at once. The current workflow works great for adding a single channel, but it was tedious to add more than one channel. I imagine most people using this service will add many channels at the beginning.

- I'd like to be able to keep the same channel selections on multiple devices. Accounts and/or sync would probably be a lot of overhead to implement. Maybe some kind of unique link that contains a list of channels, like how PCPartPicker creates unique links for each build?

- Someone else mentioned this, and I'd like to +1 it - clicking the channel in the Channels section does nothing, when I'd expect it to show the channel's videos.

Other than that, I love it! Great work!

Re: Show HN: NoSuggest – Watch YouTube without the recommendation algorithm

#10

Post by seirim »

hi, my feedback is that I would like to be able to create an account, because I have my browser (Firefox) set to always clear all cookies and history on shutdown, so when I re-open this later I assume all my added channels would be lost, and would need to start from scratch. If it wasn't for that, I think it's great and would use it.
Post reply on HN