YTSimple

I like YouTube. The content is great. But everything around the content is designed to keep you on the platform longer than you intended. Recommendations in the sidebar. Autoplay queuing up the next video before you even decide if you want it. Comments pulling you into arguments you never asked for. Shorts hijacking your scroll. Ads everywhere.

I wanted to watch a video, not browse a casino.

So I built YTSimple. It’s a free Chrome extension that strips YouTube down to the essentials: the video, the title, and a way to search for more.

What it actually looks like

When you open YouTube with YTSimple enabled, the homepage is gone. Instead you get a clean, centered search bar with autocomplete. Type what you want, hit enter, pick a video.

On the watch page, the video is centered on the screen with the title displayed above it. That’s it. No sidebar recommendations. No comments. No description box. No “up next” queue trying to pull you somewhere else. Just you and the thing you chose to watch.

Theater mode and fullscreen still work normally. The video player itself is untouched.

Where did everything go?

Everything you actually need is still accessible, just tucked away so it doesn’t compete for your attention.

Move your mouse to the top of the page and a search bar slides in. Move it to the bottom right corner and three small buttons appear for notifications, subscriptions, and your account. Click any of them and a panel opens with what you need. Move your mouse away and they disappear again.

If you visit a channel page, it automatically goes to their videos tab so you see content instead of banners and about sections.

And if someone sends you a YouTube Shorts link, YTSimple automatically redirects it to the regular video player. No vertical scroll trap.

It does nothing clever with your data

YTSimple stores exactly one thing: whether you have it turned on or off. That’s saved locally in your browser. It never leaves your device.

The only network request the extension makes is to Google’s autocomplete endpoint when you type in the search bar, which is the same thing YouTube itself uses. No analytics. No tracking. No external servers.

Turning it off

Sometimes you might want the full YouTube experience. Click the YTSimple icon in your browser toolbar and there’s a simple toggle. Flip it off, the page reloads, and YouTube is back to normal. Flip it on again and it all goes away.

Who this is for

If you use YouTube for learning, for music, for following specific creators, and you find yourself getting pulled into rabbit holes by the interface itself, this might help. It won’t block you from doing anything. It just removes the stuff that’s designed to grab your attention when you didn’t ask for it.

YTSimple is free on the Chrome Web Store.