I Reverse Engineered YouTube's Hook System And Built a 200-Line Extension to Break the Loop (completly free)

The reason you can't just use YouTube responsibly isn't discipline. It's Design.

YouTube's homepage is a variable-ratio slot machine. Every scroll dynamically loads 10+ new video thumbnails with zero latency. Your brain processes each one as a micro-reward before you're even conscious of scrolling. that's not a character flaw that's exactly how the interface is designed to work.

I spent a weekend tracing the client-side routing. The homepage isn't server-rendered. It's a Polymer SPA that repopulates the feed on every scroll event by intercepting a single internal navigation hook (yt-navigate-finish). That means you don't need to block the whole site. You just need to kill that one repopulation event.

I built a tiny Manifest V3 extension that does exactly that. It freezes the homepage feed to a fixed number of videos (configurable, default: 12), disables the infinite scroll listener at the routing layer, and hides the recommended sidebar entirely while a video plays. No CSS hacks YouTube can undo in a deploy. The feed just stops at N videos because the scroll handler is neutralized not because it's hidden.

What it doesn't do: block the site, require an account, phone home, or inject ads. It's 100% local vanilla JS,under 200 lines, zero remote code, zero tracking. I still search, still watch subscriptions I just don't accidentally fall into 90 minutes of unrelated videos anymore.

It's called FreezeTube if you want to look it up on the store completely free and unmonetized. Let me know if you want the direct link or want to check out the routing code!