YouTube Free November

[candycanearter07]

Well I was doing good, then I kinda hit an emotional wall on the 17th and 18th and needed an escape. Hopefully I can reel it back in for the end of the month tho.

It did make me feel more productive and everything, too.

[garystu]

I've only been doing this for a week and its made me appriciate YouTube more, not less. YouTube loads well and its app (ReVanced, anyway) works good.

When I'm hungry for web video, I try to go on other sites, but nothing loads and everything stutters. Why does NewPipe lock some PeerTube videos to an unloadable 720p? How fuckin hard would it be for archive.org utilise the services of a CDN more?

I've spent these last few days watching old Channel Awesome videos on Archive.org, which obeys the letter of the law but not the spirit. Its given me a new appreciation for these old videos, which is probably the worst possible outcome honestly.

Maybe if I did the whole month I would attain nirvana, but. I wont. I don't think I'm seriously ready to give web video up.

[Memory]

I'm a bit late to this thread, but I'd like to also give this a go. It's funny because I honestly feel like I waste too much time on YT watching sludge content, instead of watching actual stuff I wanna watch on Netflix or Shudder. I think it's cos YT has this feeling of comfort because I am watching people do their life stuff but it's a habit I wanna get out of cos I actually hate YT as a company/platform and YT is the one social media site I can't seem to chuck lol. This thread has definitely inspired me.

I can't believe how well I've stuck to this - I am normally so bad at sticking to anything! I've felt more productive without YT - been watching better things on Netflix and Shudder and finding time to read books and draw again! I've realised after doing this for so long that I don't even need YT so I deleted the app from my phone.

[candycanearter07]

Well I was doing good, then I kinda hit an emotional wall on the 17th and 18th and needed an escape. Hopefully I can reel it back in for the end of the month tho.

It did make me feel more productive and everything, too.

Stuff got way worse. Maybe next year..

[Còbra!]

So now that it's December, and the end of the challenge.
I mostly stuck to the rules, only breaking them about twice in the whole month.

It actually felt really liberating. It made me realise how addicted I was to the platform, and I used Freetube and Yattee! It feels like I've been relieved of the information and content overload that comes from Youtube.

Even now I don't enjoy being on Youtube at all, as if it's some dark place I should go back to, if that makes sense.

I think after going off Youtube, Discord was the only "big tech" site I went on, and most of my web activity was through forums and Neocities sites (or whereever Wiby's random site feature brought me), and it made me feel a lot closer to the old net.

I don't see myself using Youtube nearly as much now, and I want to thank Melooon for the challenge!

[caracalled]

I know this is a really really old thread, but I'm really curious to hear how everyone has been doing since, if people went back to Youtube after or not, and how it changed their consumption habits!
I followed this thread super closely at the time, and I loved the idea of a shared experience and trying to try something new together, and it was interesting to see peoples different experiences!

It has worked out REALLY well since August 2025. I've gone down from 1 hour and 40 mins a day on average (at the time of the thread likely far more), including sleeping to Youtube to now around 35 minutes a day on average.
However, I still haven't solved the issue of needing to listen to something to fall asleep, and especially in the past two weeks my average has been higher again as I have struggled with feeling lonely a lot while I'm abroad. Now I want to go back down again and not be dependent on some corporation and only watch what's really important to me every once in a while!

So this month I will only follow my favorites (six channels out of which three post only very rarely, less than once every few months) through my RSS reader and I want to block Youtube otherwise. I already have all of the recommendation algorithm blocked so scrolling is not gonna be a huge issue.
As for new changes:
- I will block Youtube from 12am until 10am so I don't go back to it for sleeping
- I will download a rain sounds video to make the transition a bit more gentle and so I don't spiral every night
- I will set a time limit on Youtube for 30 minutes a day

I'm not really sure how to go about downloaded videos. My problem is that I go back to the same videos a lot, so I think they should be off-limits unless I'm looking for specific information.
What do you guys think? Maybe someone even wants to join me on this very November looking March :)

[Dan Q]

I'm not really sure how to go about downloaded videos. My problem is that I go back to the same videos a lot, so I think they should be off-limits unless I'm looking for specific information.

Remotely comfortable at the command-line? Then you want yt-dlp. You can download binaries from that link, or use your favourite package manager.

Installation

YouTube has been making it harder lately; see the "strongly recommended" dependencies.

On a Mac, I just brew install yt-dlp deno. On Windows, I do something similar with choco but I don't have a Windows box close-to-hand to check that. On Debian-based *nixes, I do something similar with apt.

If yt-dlp breaks, it usually means YouTube changed something (this happens about twice a year nowadays). Just upgrade to the latest version and you're fine.

(If you're on Android, you can get similar functionality BTW from apps like FreeTube.)

Usage

Real simple: just type yt-dlp [some YouTube URL] and it'll download that video to your current directory.

There's loads of advanced options. yt-dlp -x [some YouTube URL] will just download the audio (not the video), for example, for those rain sounds you want. Run yt-dlp --help or check the documentation to see all the options. You can do things like download whole playlists, for example. Or you can convert the output to particular formats (personally, I just use Handbrake after-the-fact for that, usually).

Oh yeah, and yt-dlp does other video sites too. Grab a video from Instagram, or Vimeo, or Nebula (use e.g. --cookies-from firefox so it can log in as you!), or Twitch, or whatever.

Demo attached: open it in your web browser (it's an animated SVG).

[caracalled]

Remotely comfortable at the command-line? Then you want yt-dlp. You can download binaries from that link, or use your favourite package manager.

You misunderstand me hahaha, I'm already using yt-dlp and also very comfortable with command line stuff. My post was about whether I want to allow myself to watch videos from my archive of downloaded videos ;)

[Dan Q]

Oops! Sorry! Got that one completely backwards!

Yeah, that's a good question. For me, my non-use of YouTube is about YouTube itself (hating their surveillance capitalism, increasingly terrible UI, terrible subscription system with awful algorithmic shepherding, etc.). But I appreciate that for others it might be about the drain on mental health that comes from the click-watch-click-watch-click-watch cycle.

For me, using videos offline would probably be sufficient to dodge that. No "watch next...", no recommendations, and so on. But I've never really been inclined to "just one more video" antipatterns in my life anyway. (Don't get me started on "just one more turn" of Civilization, though...)

But yeah; if you're looking to reduce idle-watching-time in your life, you might want to think about what to do with downloaded videos. Perhaps earmarking scheduled time that you're allowed to watch is sufficient? I don't know.

Thanks for clarifying!

[caracalled]

Oops! Sorry! Got that one completely backwards!

BAHAHA, no worries at all!! It would've been an absolutely wonderful suggestion, had I not already known about it, big fan as well!

I think the question you're asking is a really good one! Why do I want to stop watching beyond what I've already done? (since I've really minimized it to a point where I don't actually use the website itself at all anymore)
I think my main problem is that I notice that I'm using someone talking in the background as a coping mechanism to prevent me from spiraling at night, but that's really not what I want to be doing. I also just get a huge ick from the content voice and I want to not see things through that content lens, if this makes sense at all?
I think scheduled time is a good suggestion, but I have a hard time sticking to that. What I came up with in the meantime is blocking the website and putting the archived videos on a hard drive that I physically have to get up and dig for if I want to watch ;)

And thank you for your very nice response!! (You remind me a lot of the people I meet at developer conferences heh)

[Dan Q]

And thank you for your very nice response!! (You remind me a lot of the people I meet at developer conferences heh)

In that I sound helpful, but when you actually stop and think about it you realise I'm solving entirely the wrong problem?

Yeah, that tracks!

[candycanearter07]

I've recently gotten into listening to podcasts to try and combat my Youtube addiction, though I still also use my reader to subscribe to Youtube to keep up with some channels I like (though I have it set up to load in mpv instead so it doesnt have ads and stuff).

My favorite podcasts at the moment are:

• Hacker Public Radio is a open podcast where anyone can submit an episode. I've submitted a few myself, but the variety of episodes is very good since it can come from anywhere. It also has episodes going back to 2007 if you want to binge listen to episodes.
• Citation Needed with Molly White is an interesting editorial podcast covering cryptocurrency (yes its still around somehow) and tech issues, though they also offer episodes through text if you prefer reading it?
• The Topical was a "news" channel run by the Onion. It only ran from 2020-2021, but the archives are extremely funny and I miss when it was running, since I used to follow this one on youtube back when it was running...
• Distractible is the podcast run by famous youtuber Markiplier, its basically a mini game show where they do little improv games and the energy is really good and its a fun listen.
• The Chaotix Casefiles is a really fun audioserial made by SEGA, its basically a detective drama with the Sonic characters and its just a fun time, the sound design is really good and you can tell whats supposed to be going on, and I just really like these characters :)

Also, one nice tip if you wanted to get into podcasts, the site https://podnews.net/ has rss feeds for podcasts on Spotify, which lets you subscribe to them with any RSS reader without needing to make a spotify account, at the cost of an ad or two being baked into the file.