How to avoid binge-watching YouTube videos

The magic of YouTube is hard to extricate itself? Don't worry, this article will introduce several ways to help you get rid of YouTube's "stickiness", focus on your work, and use your time efficiently.

Unttrapp: Customize your YouTube interface

Unttrapp is a free browser extension (free Chrome and Firefox, and $2 for Safari version), with a highly customized YouTube interface. After installation, you can customize over 150 options, such as: Remove video recommendations from the sidebar, hide comments, set YouTube homepage to your subscription channel (rather than algorithm recommendations), blur thumbnails, disable capital titles, And prevent thumbnails from automatically playing when the mouse hovers. Untrapp even allows you to set a specific time period for watching YouTube every day, or block certain channels completely. If you want to control YouTube usage habits, Untrapp is worth a try.

Invidious: Completely replace YouTube interface

Invidious is an alternative interface to YouTube, a stand-alone website that allows you to watch videos without visiting the official YouTube website. It is open source and privacy-oriented, Google cannot track your viewing history and has no ads.

However, Invidious also has some disadvantages: it may be slightly slower than YouTube, some videos may not be played, and your YouTube account cannot be used, which means features such as subscriptions, comments and viewing history are not available. But if you don't care about that, Invidious allows you to watch videos without falling into YouTube's "trap". Invidious offers free services on multiple servers, and it is recommended that you try several servers and then add a well-running server to your bookmark. You can also use browser extensions like Privacy Redirect to open all YouTube links in Invidious.

Desktop player: Further control

VLC is a popular video player that can also play YouTube videos. Just click on "File", "Open Network Stream", paste the YouTube video link, and then click on "Open". You will only see the playback controls for videos and VLCs, and not the sidebar, comments, or other YouTube features.

This method requires additional steps. If you want a simpler desktop app, try MiniTube (Windows and macOS cost 10 euros, free for Linux users). MiniTube offers a free trial, which offers a clean desktop client with no ads, no tracking, no comments and recommendations.

MiniTube is perhaps the simplest YouTube interface you can get on your desktop computer, which allows you to watch individual videos easily without being interfered with by other video recommendations.

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