Sanctum
Pause before YouTube pulls you into another loop
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Sanctum - Pause before YouTube pulls you into another loop

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Sanctum is a Chrome extension for people who want YouTube to be useful without letting recommendations, autoplay, and Shorts decide what happens next. It adds small, intentional pauses before distracting actions, helps you name why you opened YouTube, and offers gentle reflection instead of hard blocking. The goal is not to control your behavior, but to restore a moment of choice.

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Maker
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Hi Product Hunt! I’m Wonseok, a solo maker from Seoul. 👋 I built Sanctum after noticing how easily one intentional YouTube visit could turn into an endless loop of recommendations, Shorts, and impulsive clicks. I didn’t want to build another tool that simply locks people out or treats distraction as a failure of willpower. The problem, to me, was the loss of a moment of awareness—the point where “I chose to watch this” quietly becomes “I’m still watching.” Sanctum adds gentle friction at those moments. It can calm thumbnails, ask what you came to YouTube for, pause Shorts loops, offer mindful breaks, and help you reflect on where the current viewing flow is taking you. The approach evolved from blocking more content to restoring more choice. Sanctum does not decide what people should watch. It creates a small space where they can notice what is happening and choose again. I’d especially value feedback on: • Which interventions feel genuinely helpful? • Which ones feel too disruptive? • Where do you most often lose track of your original intention on YouTube? Thank you for taking a look at Sanctum.

the intention prompt before shorts loops is such a thoughtful touch, basically gives you just enough friction without being annoying. nice work on making it feel like a gentle nudge instead of a blocker.

Maker

 Thank you, Sevim — that’s exactly what I hoped the prompt would feel like. I wanted to create a small moment to reconsider, without taking the choice away from the user. I really appreciate you trying it and sharing this.