YouTube Content Filter

About

YouTube's algorithm is designed to keep you watching—not to help you learn, create, or stay focused.

Every time you open YouTube, you're fighting an engagement machine optimized to serve whatever keeps you scrolling. Educational videos get buried under reaction content. That quick tutorial search ends with an hour of clips you never meant to watch.
YouTube Content Filter shifts the default. Instead of resisting distractions, you opt into them—intentionally.

How it works:
The extension uses AI (Claude by Anthropic) to analyze video titles and channels on your YouTube home page. Videos that don't match your current goal get blurred with a semi-transparent overlay. You'll see exactly why each video was filtered—the category and reasoning—so you're never wondering "why was this blocked?"

And you're always in control: every filtered video has a "Show Anyway" button. One click reveals it instantly.


Choose your focus mode:
Productive — Blocks entertainment, gaming, reactions. Keeps tutorials, lectures, and documentaries.
Learning — Strict mode. Only tutorials and educational lectures get through.
Relax — Filtering off. Full YouTube experience when you want it.
Custom — Pick exactly which categories to block.

Key features:

Blurs unproductive videos before you see them (not after you're tempted)
Transparent AI decisions—see the category and reason for every filter
"Show Anyway" always available—you have final say
Shorts automatically blocked (configurable)
Switch profiles instantly without refreshing the page
Works on YouTube home page (more surfaces coming soon)

Privacy-first: Your video data is sent only to Anthropic's API for classification. Nothing is stored on external servers. You provide your own API key.

Requires: An Anthropic API key from console.anthropic.com (takes 2 minutes to set up, costs fractions of a cent per classification)


Coming Soon

Classification caching to reduce API costs
Filtering on watch page sidebar and search results
Custom filtering instructions ("I'm learning Spanish", "I'm a programmer")
Channel whitelist/blacklist
Usage statistics and insights
Optional subscription plan (no API key needed)