The problem
I’d open YouTube for one video and end up deep in the recommendations. I also had no honest number for how much I was actually watching. and the same stuff keeps coming up even after watching them.
What I built
A Chrome extension with no dependencies. It caps the home feed at a number i set, blurs thumbnails and titles until you hover, and adds a Hide button to every video so it never shows up again. Watch time only counts while a video is playing and the tab is on screen. Everything is stored on your computer and the extension makes no network requests.
Result
The feed stops competing for attention, and the watch time I see is the real one.