Also, mpv supports lua scripts for a variety of actions on YouTube (or other streaming) videos, such as showing you YouTube's recommended videos in the video player, clipping and downloading videos, sponsorblock and submitting sponsorblock segments, and so on.
I've been doing this for almost a decade, and I do recommend it. In my experience, just importing my YouTube subscriptions into a feed reader was a positive experience. I've had a daily digest of mostly interesting videos and rarely (if ever) the urge to browse YouTube.
But with YouTube's recommendation algorithm out of the picture, it does mean that you'll have to find some other way of discovering new channels.
As it is, I can do that somewhat manually and it makes for a nice interface where I'm sure what the kids are watching.
Did it in ~300 lines of node.js, was trying to learn how to use JS for server stuff, seemed like a good idea at the time. It still works 5 years later, but it stands as a reminder to me to never use async/await.
What issues did you face with async/await?
I’ve noticed a major market shift recently where people are becoming paralyzed by the "firehose" of content. Information scarcity used to reward knowledge acquisition, but we now live in an era of information abundance, which requires better pattern recognition and synthesis.
In my own work building AI systems, I always say that leverage is a function of your skill multiplied by your clarity. Most "brain rot" happens because we outsource our clarity to an algorithm that is engineered to keep us emotionally volatile and stagnant. By returning to human curation, you’re providing the kind of focus that actually recharges a person rather than numbing them out.
I’m also a huge fan of the "no accounts" approach. I talk a lot about data privacy and the importance of keeping your personal "mental OS" protected—keeping data local is the ultimate firewall against being treated like training data for a system you didn't opt into.
I often tell founders to "launch faster" and "keep it stupidly simple" for V1. This nails the core "aha moment" without unnecessary complexity. Curation is a massive, underserved opportunity right now. Great work shipping this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41247023
I like that this one adds a classic blue cable guide though.
Actually I really wish this had existed while my father was still alive! Toward the end of his life, he had developed pretty debilitating Alzheimers, but he still liked to watch TV. The problem was, modern TVs were way too complex for him to use. My mom had to come in the room and put on DVDs for him pretty much all day. I'm sure he could have figured out how to channel surf by himself if that had been an option.
Which has folks from The History channel, Pawn Stars, etc
1. You can share a channel with a friend and know that they see the same thing as you. What's on at 5:03pm on channel 4 is the same for everyone.
2. The decision of what to watch is topical and greatly simplified. It extracts the decisions from "the algorithm" and gives you agency again.
3. There's a lot of stuff you never see on Youtube's recommendations because the algorithm doesn't show you those videos. Ever.
Recent media coverage:
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/12/channel-surfer-watch-youtu...
https://www.theverge.com/tech/893598/this-is-immediately-my-...
https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/youtube/this-web-app-...
https://hackaday.com/2025/10/17/channel-surfing-nostalgia-ma...
Normally I'd leave your comment in the original thread as a pointer, but since the other links are of interest, I've moved it too.
(the other thread was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366400)
Looks great!
I had wanted to use something that lets me set up an EPG with all of the YouTube channels I watch, to see their live streams in a TV guide and see their upcoming streams in a nice grid format. It's probably harder to do this with live stuff than it is to have a set of videos like this site uses.
https://youtu.be/ucXYWG0vqqk?t=1889
I find him speaking really soothing.
Other than that, this totally fits the nostalgia of old school cable channel surfing!
Well done!
One thing I love(d) about live TV (or even live radio) was the community around knowing other people were watching the exact same thing I was watching (and then the watercooler chat around it afterwards).
If there was live chat attached to each of these "stations", it could spark some interesting chatter/community.
I know this already exists OOTB with YouTube Live, FB Live, etc.
But this would be for things that were simply uploaded, and now streamed live like you're doing here.
Obviously, that only works if there's enough viewership/participation.
This is, effectively, no different than a carousel of algorithm-recommended content. However, UX studies have found users reluctant to watch something recommended to them. It requires making an affirmative decision on time investment. Most people have the experience of a friend recommending a movie or book and still being reluctant to dive in.
The problem is very similar to dating apps, if you think about it. This is why Tinder's innovation on "swipe left/right" took off the way it did. In UX terms it's better to drop users into something and make the cognitive effort be choosing to get out of it rather than choosing to get into it. It's a big part of why TikTok works.
The reason this isn't more common in video apps has more to do with UX norms at this point. Another important thing I learned about streaming at Disney was that no one really cares how innovative the browsing experience is. They just want to watch Frozen. They're used to carousels now, and they're easy to program. This, I think, speaks more to your sensibilities.
I typically share your mindset, but I can see the appeal. There was something nice about the TV that just, ya know, already had something going when you turned it on. I spent many happy evenings in hazy basement rooms enjoying whatever Adult Swim decided was going to be on the TV that night.
I chalk it up to overwhelming choices. Sometimes I just want to watch something but don't want to go through dozens of options and having decision anxiety.
Bonus is sometimes I discover something I never thought I would have liked.
This is by far the biggest annoyance with modern TV for me. If I've already decided on something I want to watch, it's obviously great to just be able to navigate to it and put it on on my schedule, to pause it, have no ads, etc.
But sometimes, for better or worse, I just want to plunk down on the couch and turn my brain off, and if I'm in that mode the last thing I want to do is try to find something worth watching on my own steam.
Like, Youtube is great! Yeah, there's a ton of crap, but there's so much on there that would entertain me and be a guilt-free, even edifying use of me time. But having to choose something new every 10-20 minutes? Actively managing a queue while watching stuff? That's - pardon my French - for the birds.
I used to do that but the shows repeat and at the top of the hour or sometimes multiple times they repeat the same news over and over. I get someone else might be tuning in and not have heard the latest news
Maybe there's some middle ground where instead of a stream it's on demand but continuous. So I go to videostream.npr.com and since it knows it's a single user it can push the news once and then just be shows.
That said, youtube autoplay is the basic concept, it just sucks at what it recommends.
I guess this is basically how TV worked in the pre-streaming days - the new episode of whatever hot series aired during the prime time slot, and lesser slots were filled with reruns / resyndicated stuff.
Good: I choose to when and what to change the channel to. The channel never stops.
Bad: YouTube video ends and I'm prompted to do something every 5 to 15 mins and even autoplay chooses to show me content from another channel.
Though ultimately it was not that difficult of a habit to drop.
It might be better to just turn this on when I'm wanting to watch something than open YouTube and look at my homepage.
Does this avoid YouTube ads or pass them through? I somewhat wonder if this kind of thing is the reason that YouTube wants to progressively lock down their platform. (They don't want users avoiding their algorithms and their ads.)
Curation feels better with this implementation?