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Show HN: KidScreen, a finite YouTube shelf chosen by parents

kidscreen.app

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Re: Show HN: KidScreen, a finite YouTube shelf chosen by parents

#61

Post by Tintly »

Hey, thanks for all the comments.

I made KidScreen for my two daughters. They both have their own iPads, and I wanted them to have separate video shelves with only the YouTube videos I chose for them.

How it works is very simple: I create one family, add my children, and paste YouTube links into each child’s shelf. Each child has their own login and sees only their own videos. I put KidScreen on the Home Screen as a web app, block regular YouTube and other video sources with Screen Time, and allow KidScreen with youtube-nocookie.com. So when they open it, there is no search, no endless feed, and no random videos to choose from — only what I added.

KidScreen is free. I built it for my own family first, and if it is useful for other parents, I will keep developing it. It will stay free. It is a web app, not a native TV or mobile app, and it does not download videos for offline use. It can work in a browser on a TV, but it was not made specifically for TV.

In my own setup I have not seen ads or recommendations. But the main point is simple: no video appears on the child’s shelf because of an algorithm. It is there because the parent added it.

A lot of you are right about one thing: the main page does not explain this well enough. I thought people would just try it because it is free, but I understand why someone wants to know exactly how it works before signing up. I will move the About section to the main page, add screenshots, and explain the product better.

Re: Show HN: KidScreen, a finite YouTube shelf chosen by parents

#62

Post by leZon »

Nice idea, and the core insight is right: for young kids the danger isn't YouTube itself, it's the recommendation engine; one video ends and three more autoplay before a parent even notices. Killing "search" and "endless feed" entirely rather than trying to tune a filter is the correct call; filters always leak eventually.

A few things I'd want to know as a parent before trusting it: does it embed via the official YouTube API (so ads/age gates still apply) or scrape, and what happens when a curated video gets deleted or age-restricted upstream ? Does the shelf just silently break?

Re: Show HN: KidScreen, a finite YouTube shelf chosen by parents

#63

Post by flawed_crater »

fy20 wrote: post #24
MostlyStable wrote: post #23

YouTube Kids in theory solves all my problems, the issue is that it's garbage software where the most important features are broken. For example I recently went on a long trip and grabbed the kids tablet. Only to discover after leaving the house, that all the previously downloaded videos were gone, and all the new ones that the app had chosen from among my whitelisted channels had "failed to download", despite having…

The solution I came up with was yt-dlp. I tried Netflix as well, worked great on the flight, but as soon as we got to the destination and connected to WiFi "This content is not available in your location". That was with downloaded content. Restarting the app with WiFi off did not allow it to play ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

May I ask how you solve it with ytdlp.

Re: Show HN: KidScreen, a finite YouTube shelf chosen by parents

#65

Post by jonhohle »

Tintly wrote: post #46
jonhohle wrote: post #15

Sell this to school districts. This is what Google should have done from the beginning.

That is an interesting direction. KidScreen is currently built for individual families, not school administration, so it does not yet have the provisioning, classroom management, or compliance features schools would need. If you have a specific school workflow in mind, I would be interested to hear it.

For what I’ve seen at my kids school: the district leaves all of “safesearch” YouTube open for the few dozen videos teachers will use during the school year. But since they don’t control safe search filters sometimes those videos get blocked meanwhile porn, grooming, gaming, and all kinds of other things get through.

I’ve always thought this should be a whitelist tied to students enrolled in particular classes. Videos could be chosen to be universally available for all students by district admin, available to all students at a school by site admin, or available to students in a class by individual teachers.

Re: Show HN: KidScreen, a finite YouTube shelf chosen by parents

#66

Post by Aeolun »

Tintly wrote: post #44
Aeolun wrote: post #10

How does it stop Youtube from showing recommendations?

KidScreen removes the YouTube browsing experience: there is no search, no feed, and no algorithm choosing the next video for the child. I add the exact videos myself, and the child sees only that finite shelf. On my children’s iPads I use KidScreen as a Home Screen web app and block the other video sources with Screen Time. In my testing I have not seen ads or recommendations in this setup.

Doesn’t that rather defeat the point? Aren’t kids supposed to discover for themselves which things they like?

Re: Show HN: KidScreen, a finite YouTube shelf chosen by parents

#67

Post by Tintly »

leZon wrote: post #62

Nice idea, and the core insight is right: for young kids the danger isn't YouTube itself, it's the recommendation engine; one video ends and three more autoplay before a parent even notices. Killing "search" and "endless feed" entirely rather than trying to tune a filter is the correct call; filters always leak eventually. A few things I'd want to know as a parent before trusting it: does it embed via the official Yo…

[flagged]

Re: Show HN: KidScreen, a finite YouTube shelf chosen by parents

#68

Post by Tintly »

Aeolun wrote: post #66
Tintly wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KidScreen removes the YouTube browsing experience: there is no search, no feed, and no algorithm choosing the next video for the child. I add the exact videos myself, and the child sees only that finite shelf. On my children’s iPads I use KidScreen as a Home Screen web app and block the other video sources with Screen Time. In my testing I have not seen ads or recommendations in this setup.

Doesn’t that rather defeat the point? Aren’t kids supposed to discover for themselves which things they like?

[flagged]

Re: Show HN: KidScreen, a finite YouTube shelf chosen by parents

#69

Post by pmarreck »

Tintly wrote: post #51
pmarreck wrote: post #13

I, too, am a parent of a toddler who would like more control over what YouTube feeds my kid's brain. It's almost as if YouTube should be the responsible party here, and yet... isn't. I'm on the verge of building my own frontend to YT and using open source tooling to download only what I approve of, since their algo keeps shoving shit en masse at my kid. Oh, and I have no idea what this app does, and don't care to sig…

That is fair criticism. If someone has to register just to understand what the product does, the public page has failed. The short version is: a parent adds exact YouTube URLs, and the child gets a finite shelf with no search or endless feed around the official player. I should make the flow, data boundaries, and limitations public before sign-up.

Yes, that makes more sense now! There was no clue of that before the forced signup. One would like to know what one is even signing up for, you know? Give me a tease at least! haha. Good luck!
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