Doing this allows you to actually free yourself from planned distractions of certain websites, which is designed to pull in as much as attention as possible
I use Unhook for Youtube :D there are many extensions for Chrome and Firefox meant to clean out recomendations
Just saw this one yesterday on lemmy:
Removes clickbait thumbnails from YouTube and just pulls one from somewhere within the video.
Same creator as Sponsorblock, another must have for YouTube. Skips portions of the video that are basically spam, configurable to skip various parts.
And of course ublock origin for ad blocking, which also removes advertising in YouTube videos, at least for now.
For iOS users: install AdGuard and go through the steps to make it run on Safari. Then delete the YouTube app and replace it with a shortcut to the website. No ads. You do sometimes have to manually update the filters.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I never knew it existed.
I installed it, made sure the settings were all correct, and then opened YouTube in safari to test it.
It certainly worked, but I somehow got caught going down a 1 hour rabbit hole of The Beatles’ studio tricks.
🤣
But at least there were no ads
I just installed dearrow because of this post. Now some of my videos show the content creators making funny faces, like mid-smile or blink. Nice.
I already have sponsorblock. Solid app.
Recently found Whoogle and have been enjoying it a lot. I’ve got it on an Ubuntu server, but it looks like there are public instances too. It’s a more focused, ad free, search. In the settings you can redirect to privacy focused alternatives like Libreddit as well.
I’m going to have to try Unhook, YouTube distractions are one of my biggest.
The one I use is called LeechBlock, I can set block lists, time of use per unit of time (day, hour, etc), block times on specific days, I can even set it to lock me out of the settings during specific times so I can’t easily change things when I’m block out of distractions.
It’s on Firefox and Chrome, maybe others but I’m not sure.
Of course it can get really annoying but that’s the point really, bother me enough to break the cycle of endlessly clicking the day away.
Has it helped you made grass-to-hand contact?
When configured properly it’s helped me step back from my computer and get things done.
I’d say the biggest thing it helps with is giving me a sense of time when on the usual distraction websites.
I’ve gotten more stuff done with LeechBlock than without that’s for sure.
Unhook and remove YouTube shorts extentions have saved me probably days go time by now. Absolutely recommend trying them out.
Do you have a separate Shorts remover? I looked at settings and you can use Unhook for that too.
I seem to get looped into Shorts, meaning I don’t notice how fixated I become watching them until I blink and notice 20 minutes has passed. I just installed Unhook after reading this post and turned off shorts, BUT there are two Shorts creaters I love. Since I set Unhook to only show me my subscriptions, I can still see Shorts that I am subscribed to, which is a good thing. They only make one a day or every other day, so it’s not overwhelming. Also, I LOVE that the recommended side bar is gone.
I see Unhook as a solid recommendation.
Everyone here is awesome. These are great links.
