For a while now I’ve always wanted a better way to… browse, I really don’t enjoy my time in the browser and always wanted to make it as limited as possible. And since I really hate social media that wasn’t really a hard task… but still, the results I managed to achieve weren’t enough, at least not for me. My first weakness is YouTube, which I tried many times to get rid of but let’s be honest that ain’t a wise thing to do being an Algerian student am I right? I mean even though I don’t like the idea of educational content in such distracting website I still find myself going back to it many times, I still need access to YouTube somehow but how can I get there without getting distracted with all these shorts shoved into my face and all those thumbnails that are design to grab my attention. Here, I’ll walk you through the tips I followed along the past few years to spend as little time as possible on YouTube and depending on it:

Using Multiple Accounts for Different Interests Link to heading

This way you may not be limiting your access to YouTube, however you’re gonna be improving the algorithms you can’t fight, lemme explain. See YouTube is a HUGE platform and for every single interest of yours I bet you’re gonna find at least a YouTube channel about it (unless you’re a freak with some freaky interests ofc). Now think about how much of a challenge it is for those poor algorithms to decide what are the videos you want in your feed, I get it YouTube algorithms may be powerful af but still, we’re humans and we all have different interests. Take me for the example, yes most of the time what I want is just some linuxy news and some nice rices to look at an all but my life isn’t all about tech I have some other things I like to watch too, maybe some MC content to remind me of the good old days or why not some productivity tips to improve my habits. I’m a moody human being too one hour I may be all about motivational videos looking and then bam I find myself watching 9 videos about whether Music is Halal or not, that’s the nature of the platform, distracting. So to limit that I started separating my different interests into different google accounts, and just switch to the one I want whenever I need it. I want to follow some Linux news or look for some video to troubleshot problem I have in my own distro? I have just the account for that which is the same account where I followed the tutorial to install the distro I’m running which means the search results I’m going to get in this account are more most likely to be related to that distro which means less time looking for the right video. I want to watch some videos about how to bring back my reading passion or to look up some Islamic fatwa? I have an account for that as well! which I use only for productive and useful stuff that I might come back later, such as watching a documentary or listening to a podcast or an audio book. Looking for some entertainment after such a long day? you guessed it I have an MC/Gaming account to watch my favorite Gamers. Also I have an account I use for searching some random things and downloading music and stuff like that. This improves my YouTube usage and makes it really easy to just logout of those “distracting accounts” and keep the ones I actually need whenever I need to focus.

Blocking Shorts Link to heading

I’m not sure if there is a way to do this on mobile but this is the blog I found to do it in my browser and boy you have no idea how happy I was when I saw my YouTube page shorts free and just as clean as it used to be, if you like me hate short content so much but can’t help it to find yourself you scrolling there because you miss clicked something… you’ll love this filter.

Using Third-Party Software Link to heading

Now we’re getting a bit more technical about this, I think that you can find some alternative websites to the official one which does exactly what this piece of software I’m about to tell u about does but trust me, ytfzf is worth your time. If you want to just search YouTube without having to open your browser and see all that JS and the bloat of the “modern” feed on your RAMs, you really need to try this powerful script because man I just can’t recommend it enough go and set it up first this after you finish reading this blog. Also… I get that third party apps may not be as Halal as I think, most YouTube videos has copyrights and YouTube ain’t exactly allowing “free” access to the content, so I might reconsider these things sometime soon and… so should you (if you’re a Muslim ofc if you’re not well then go nuts XD).

Using RSS Link to heading

Now this is a new one for me, which is ironic cuz apparently this thing is older than me. I don’t know much about it so far since I literally just saw Luke’s videos about it a few hours ago and installed Newboat in my system and man do I love this shit. It solved the one problem I had with ytfzf which was the fact that it is nth but a search bar now I can access the content of my favorite YouTube channels right from my terminal and the Newboat subscription, and not only that but apparently RSS can do I love more which kinda reminded me of the Gemini protocol that I really which for it to get more attention.


Hopefully with the help of these bad boys and a little bit more work on my system I’ll be able to completely leave the browser before the of this year, it is a big one for me and I really which to get there as soon as I can cuz I’m srsly sick of the web. As always if you made it this far thank you so much for your time, lemme know if you found this blog helpful and if I should write more about this kind of stuff. See you next time, farewell.

Seth.