AI YouTube content filter — reduce distractions without blocking YouTube
Algoright AI filters your YouTube feed by category. Shorts, clickbait, gossip, politics — whichever you choose stops appearing, while search, subscriptions and the videos you actually came for keep working exactly as before.
The problem with blocking YouTube
YouTube is genuinely useful. It is where the tutorial is, where the lecture is, where the repair guide for your specific dishwasher is. Blocking it outright means losing all of that to avoid the feed, which is why site blockers on YouTube tend to get disabled within a week and never re-enabled.
The part that costs you time is not YouTube. It is the home feed, the sidebar and the Shorts shelf — the surfaces that suggest things you never asked for. Those are what Algoright filters.
What gets filtered on YouTube
The home feed
Each recommended video is sorted into one of 35 categories from its title and channel name. Anything in a category you have switched off is hidden before you see it.
Shorts
Hide the Shorts shelf and Shorts entries entirely with one switch, or let them through and filter them by category like anything else.
The sidebar and "up next"
The recommendation rail beside a playing video is the most common route into a rabbit hole. It can be hidden completely.
Comments and sponsored content
Both are separate switches, independent of the category filters.
Clickbait is its own category
"Clickbait" is one of the 35 categories, which means it is filtered on the same mechanism as any topic. A video is judged on its title and channel — sensational phrasing, manufactured urgency, the familiar patterns — rather than on a keyword blocklist you have to maintain yourself.
This is worth being plain about: classification reads a title and a channel name and picks a category. It is not reading the video, and it will occasionally get one wrong. When it does, you can correct it from the extension, and that correction feeds back into the classifier.
Who this is for
- People who use YouTube for work or study and need it open without the feed pulling them off-task.
- People who have tried a site blocker and turned it off. All-or-nothing did not fit, because the platform was genuinely needed.
- People who mainly want Shorts gone. That is one switch and it is free.
- People who want a narrower feed on purpose — Deep Work Mode locks the feed to a single category, which is a Pro feature.
Setting it up
Install the extension, open YouTube, and click the Algoright icon to choose which categories to hide. There is no account required for YouTube filtering. The full walkthrough is on how it works.
Questions about the YouTube filter
Does Algoright block YouTube?
No. YouTube stays fully usable. Search works, your subscriptions work, direct links work, and any video you deliberately open plays normally. What changes is the recommendation surfaces — the home feed, the sidebar and Shorts — where content you have filtered out stops appearing.
Can I hide YouTube Shorts completely?
Yes. Hiding Shorts is a single switch and it does not depend on category classification at all — it removes the Shorts shelf and the Shorts entries from the feed outright.
Is the YouTube filter free?
Yes, free forever, and it does not require an account to install. The free tier covers up to 1,000 videos filtered a day. For scale, an hour of heavy scrolling is roughly 200 to 400 videos, so that comfortably covers normal use. Pro removes the cap.
Can I still watch a video that would normally be filtered?
Yes. Filtering hides things from the feed; it does not lock them. If you search for a video or follow a link to it, it plays. The point is to stop the algorithm offering it unprompted, not to make it unreachable.
Does it hide YouTube comments?
It can, as a separate switch. Comment sections are a common way to lose ten minutes after a two-minute video, so hiding them is offered independently of the category filters.
Will it slow YouTube down?
Classification runs locally in the browser and is designed to work on the titles already present in the page, so in normal use there is no noticeable delay. Nothing has to round-trip to a server before the feed renders.
Can I block distracting YouTube recommendations specifically?
Yes — that is what category filtering and hiding the sidebar are for. The home feed and the "up next" rail beside a playing video are where most unwanted recommendations come from; filtering by category thins the home feed, and hiding the sidebar removes the rail entirely.
Filter your YouTube feed for free
No account needed. Install, pick your categories, and the feed changes on the next refresh.
Free covers YouTube forever, up to 1,000 videos filtered a day. TikTok, Instagram and X filtering are part of Pro.