Detube

I kept finding myself trapped in the scroll, clicking on videos I didn’t really care about, losing hours, and leaving frustrated. YouTube’s algorithms aren’t built to help me. They’re built to keep me hooked.

So I stripped it down. My version, Detube, is just search and watch. No feeds. No Shorts. No manipulative recommendations. Just me and the videos I actually came to see. Finally, a YouTube that respects my time and attention.

The work is complete. I've built a minimal YouTube interface that lets me search and watch videos without ads, algorithmic feeds, or the other things that make YouTube a time sink.

You can try it here. It's nothing fancy, but that's the point.

I built it using Python for the backend to interact with YouTube's API, and vanilla JavaScript for the frontend to handle user interactions. Bootstrap is used for styling to keep things clean and simple.

I used this as a project to learn how to work with APIs and backends. Previously I only worked with client-side applications. The tech is quite simple: Python queries YouTube's API and passes the search query, sorting preferences, and whether Shorts should be included. Vanilla JS handles the search, sorting, refresh, and rendering, while Bootstrap keeps everything styled neatly.