Youtubezen

YouTube Zen

It is a minimalist desktop app to view YouTube videos without the recommendations, comments, or promotions. Just a pure video-viewing experience.

Why?

• It is not an extension, so you can't disable it and accidentally see things you weren't intending to.
• It is not a website, so you can't just switch tabs instantly for something else.
• It treats shorts like videos, so you won’t get trapped in doomscrolling.

Technologies Used

• Golang
• Wails
• Svelte
• Typescript

How to Use?

Download the latest executable for your operating system from the Releases section. Create a .env file in the same directory as the executable and put your YouTube API Key:

YOUTUBE_API_KEY=API_KEY

Live Development

To run in live development mode, run wails dev in the project directory. This will launch a Vite development server, providing very fast hot reloads for your frontend changes. If you want to develop in a browser and access your Go methods, there is also a dev server available at http://localhost:34115. Connect to this in your browser, and you can call your Go code from the devtools.

Building

To build a redistributable, production mode package, use wails build.

Disclaimer

This project is not made by Google or YouTube, and it is not an alternative to YouTube. It is simply an app for people who want to keep using YouTube without getting distracted or addicted, like I did.