Skip to content

v1.0.0 - dumbify, YouTube reimagined

Choose a tag to compare

View all tags
@edenreb edenreb released this 02 Sep 19:50
· 42 commits to main since this release
v1.0.0
ab3b4f0
This commit was created on GitHub.com and signed with GitHub’s verified signature.
GPG key ID: B5690EEEBB952194
Verified
Learn about vigilant mode.

Dumbify v1.0.0

A calm, text-first YouTube.

First public release. Dumbify sits on top of youtube.com and renders it as a plain,
readable list — no thumbnails, no autoplay, no recommendation rabbit holes. You stay
signed in, and subscriptions, history, and comments all keep working.

Features

Text-first feed — titles, channel, views, and upload date. No thumbnails, across
home, search, channel pages, history, subscriptions, and watch later.

Distraction-free watch page — title, description, and comments. No autoplay, no
end-screen suggestions, no "up next" sidebar.

Focus mode — press F for a full-screen, chrome-free player.

Real interactions, not a read-only mirror — subscribe and unsubscribe, like
comments, reply, and view replies, all backed by YouTube's actual API using your
signed-in session.

Typography controls — 8 font sizes, 8 font families across serif, sans, and mono,
plus light and dark themes.

Keyboard-driven — Cmd/Ctrl+K to search, F for focus mode.

Infinite scroll — loads more of the real feed as you go.

How it works

Dumbify doesn't scrape the rendered page or proxy YouTube's backend. On page load it
reads the same ytInitialData / ytInitialPlayerResponse JSON that YouTube itself
renders from, and calls the same InnerTube API YouTube's own frontend uses for
pagination, subscribing, and posting comments.

Everything you do in Dumbify hits YouTube's real endpoints with your real session.
There is no shadow account, no separate write path, and no data leaves your browser.

Privacy

Dumbify collects nothing and has no server.

  • Display preferences are stored locally via chrome.storage.local and never transmitted
  • No analytics, telemetry, crash reporting, or tracking of any kind
  • Requests go only to youtube.com
  • Permissions are limited to storage, scripting, and host access to youtube.com

Full policy: https://edenreb.github.io/dumbify/PRIVACY

Technical

  • Manifest V3, TypeScript, Vite via @crxjs/vite-plugin
  • Zero runtime dependencies — plain DOM, no UI framework
  • Hand-written CSS, no preprocessor
  • No remote code: no eval, no dynamic Function, no remotely-loaded scripts
  • 46 unit tests over the extraction and formatting logic (npm test)

Install

Available from the Chrome Web Store, or build from source:

npm install && npm run build
Assets 3
Loading