Show HN: NoSuggest – Watch YouTube without the recommendation algorithm

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

46 points by VJ-2-108 4 days ago | 38 comments

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.

pixel_popping 6 minutes ago |

I feel this would have more success if you use 1:1 (or very close) the actual Youtube template. Many have attempted "clones" and so-on, never really understood why it doesn't look the SAME, that way there is no switching curve.

zuzululu 1 hour ago |

This is a welcome output, it is quite tiring to be stuck on Youtube for hours.

Anything that can:

- break the algorithm

- help reduce time on there

- discover organically

Would have a huge product market fit. We are all zonked from the algorithm saturation.

One thing I recently started doing is use the before: search filter

ex) playthroughs before: 2010

I think its really neat that we've had Youtube for such a long time its become sort of a Archive.org on its own

I especially take great joy in watching people with low subscriber count or Youtube videos from before 2015

I feel like that was the inflection point where you just had a lot of freedom to speak your mind without the permanently online crowd getting offended by everything.

VJ-2-108 1 hour ago | |

Yes, I 100% agree with you. Thank you for bringing it up.

And date filter: that is a fun way to use YouTube. The search tab in NoSuggest lets you search for specific videos without recommendations creeping in around them, so you can do that kind of intentional digging. Date filtering isn't there though. And the feed only shows the latest 5 videos per channel so it won't surface older content.

anonzzzies 8 minutes ago |

I find youtube, but also netflix, prime, Spotify etc some of the weirdest things in tech; for me they all are complete shite. How is it possible? I vote up and down stuff; how can I vote down sappy drama and then get recommended the same drama the next refresh? How can it recommend movies, shows, clips I JUST watched? How does any of this not lead to frustration? I was listening to a generated playlist at a small dinner party and it put in music I literally down voted and hate. There are 1000s of people working at these companies ; I don't know why more than 1 dev and Claude code are working at netflix in IT as it's just complete garbage. Maybe someone can explain it here.

VJ-2-108 3 minutes ago | |

It is same exact feeling I have with YouTube. Although I used YouTube more than any other streaming platforms. That frustration is exactly what NoSuggest is trying to fix, at least for YouTube. No algorithm, no recommendations, no suggestions. Just the channels you chose. Give it a try.

atema 3 hours ago |

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.

VJ-2-108 2 hours ago | |

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.

orrito 1 hour ago |

What are the biggest differences between this and going into your google settings to disable history/recommendations? I personally feel like that works well, on all platforms and removes shorts as well.

VJ-2-108 47 minutes ago | |

Yeah, I tried that too. But when I watch a video of the channel I like, there will be unending side cards of videos suggesting what to watch next. There are so many ways YouTube tries to keep you on their platform. And one more benefit that NoSuggest will not have as much ads as YouTube. Although I am using YouTube official player, meaning they could serve ads but definitely would be far less than what you see in YouTube app.

aboardRat4 1 hour ago |

Great idea, but requires learning a new UI, doesn't fetch "streams"...

In any case, it's great to see the family of FBPurity and Antigram being joined by a new tool.

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

Maybe a harsh thing to say, but I'd say that the approach is wrong. I think that the approach by FBPurity and Antigram is more practical. Just hook into the website itself, hide the dopamine-production inducing elements, such as "shorts", hide recommendations, but keep the UI the same.

VJ-2-108 1 hour ago | |

Fair critique. The browser extension approach works well on desktop but does not work on mobile at all, which is exactly where the algorithm does the most damage. That's the gap NoSuggest is filling.

aboardRat4 24 minutes ago | | |

I'm using both of the extensions on Android Firefox.

Both work, even though they require turning on "desktop mode to be full-featured (even though even on mobile versions some features wotk).

alarsama 3 hours ago |

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.

VJ-2-108 3 hours ago | |

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

alarsama 2 hours ago | | |

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!

frankieg33 2 hours ago |

I made a podcast feed from YT with podsync so that I can take videos on the go. I use the playlist feature to pull them down. this feels like a great way for me to pull out only select videos. a direct way to put vids on a feed would be great, but understand if that doesnt make any sense. thanks for putting it together.

an option for no thumbnails, or just the first screen instead ot thumbnails + lower case titles also helps lower the lizard brain pull even further.

nzxt210 1 hour ago |

You can just disable history in YT. It disables all the recommendations. Home and Shorts tabs are fully empty, so only Subscriptions tab is available.

VJ-2-108 49 minutes ago | |

And one more benefit that NoSuggest will not have as much ads as YouTube. Although I am using YouTube official player, meaning they could serve ads but definitely would be far less than what you see in YouTube app.

azangru 56 minutes ago |

> Source available in Github through NoSuggest website.

Where? I couldn't find any link to the source on the website.

skotobaza 52 minutes ago | |

I see it when I go to "Settings" and look at the footer (next to terms of service and all that).

azangru 24 minutes ago | | |

Thanks! Found it.

rmnclmnt 1 hour ago |

Is this using the youtube per-channel RSS feeds?

For people already using RSS feed readers, this is another way to achieve the same result (i do that with miniflux)

VJ-2-108 1 hour ago | |

Yes, it is using RSS feeds per channel and also there are multiple fallbacks built. NoSuggest is a curated experience just like YouTube but without algorithm recommendations.

doorpheus 3 hours ago |

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.

VJ-2-108 3 hours ago | |

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

seirim 2 hours ago |

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.

VJ-2-108 2 hours ago | |

Hey Seirim, totally valid concern. The app uses localStorage so yes, clearing cookies/history on shutdown would wipe your channels. Accounts are off the table for now since the whole point is zero sign-in friction and zero data collection. But if it helps, you can download the PWA app to your mobile and use it. Thank you very much!

Hoping NoSuggest would be useful to you in any ways.

seirim 1 hour ago | | |

Ok, there must be a way, though, just encrypt the personal channels chose with the user's password so you don't know what they have chosen, and don't track anything? And I think most people aren't too worried about it being known what their favorite 10 channels are, for example, yeah? And if you don't track what they actually watch at all, that info isn't very interesting.

charcircuit 1 hour ago | |

If you manually disable persistence for a website you shouldn't complain that there is no persistence. It's not other people's job to workaround limitations you yourself setup. Consider having your setup clearing data for this specific site if you want that data to persist.

seirim 1 hour ago | | |

I'm not complaining, I'm giving feedback to a creator that might help them be aware of some user situation they hadn't considered. A lot of people clear their browser cache at some point (I would hope) and would lose all the settings they put into this app and therefore lose all the progress they made in their setup, and it would be frustrating for them, not just me.

NewJazz 2 hours ago | |

Maybe wrap it in tauri?

VJ-2-108 2 hours ago | | |

Interesting idea but that moves it away from being a zero install web app which is core to what NoSuggest is. The PWA angle is the whole point, especially for mobile.

fret423 1 hour ago |

Could this work on a TV YouTube app? LG / Samsung.

VJ-2-108 1 hour ago | |

Sorry, it won't work like a YouTube app in TV. But if you can install a browser to your smart TV and access the URL then it will work just like in laptop.

mrtesthah 2 hours ago |

This is desperately needed. I currently use https://freetubeapp.io/ but this seems to have more flexible deployment options.

VJ-2-108 1 hour ago | |

FreeTube is great but it is a desktop app you have to install. NoSuggest works on any device straight from the browser, especially mobile where nothing else really works. Give it a go and let me know what you think please. Looking forward for your valuable feedback.