Sanctum

Pause before YouTube pulls you into another loop

3 followers

Pause before YouTube pulls you into another loop

3 followers

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.

This is the 2nd launch from Sanctum. View more

Sanctum

Launched this week

Pause before YouTube pulls you into another loop

Sanctum is a Chrome extension that helps you use YouTube intentionally instead of getting pulled into recommendations, autoplay, and Shorts. It adds gentle friction through pause prompts, viewing intentions, mindful breaks, and short reflections. The goal is not to block YouTube, but to help you notice when your original intention starts to drift. For this OpenAI Day release, GPT-5.6 helped refine the UX, copy, and interaction flows.

Free

Launch tags:Chrome Extensions•Health & Fitness•Productivity

Launch Team / Built With

Framer AI AgentsDesign and publish professional sites with AI

Promoted

OpenAI

OpenAI Day

What did GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra and Luna unlock that made your launch possible?

Maker

GPT-5.6 helped me turn Sanctum from a working Chrome extension into a clearer, more launch-ready product. It reviewed the onboarding and intervention flows, identified moments that could feel confusing or overly intrusive, refined the product copy, and helped me explain the product’s core value more precisely. Most importantly, it helped me evaluate Sanctum’s central design balance: adding enough friction to interrupt mindless YouTube use without becoming another rigid blocker. This accelerated product decisions and reduced the number of manual iterations needed to prepare the OpenAI Day release.

Report

6d ago

Maker

📌

Hi Product Hunt! 👋 I built Sanctum because I often opened YouTube with a clear purpose, then lost that purpose to recommendations, autoplay, and Shorts. Most tools treat distraction as something to block completely. I wanted to explore a gentler approach: adding a small pause at the right moment, so users can notice what they are about to do and choose again. Sanctum includes viewing intentions, pause prompts, mindful breaks, and lightweight reflections. For this OpenAI Day release, I used GPT-5.6 to review the UX, clarify the language, and refine key interaction flows. Sanctum is still evolving, and I would especially appreciate feedback on one question: Does the added friction feel helpful, or does it interrupt the experience too much? Thanks for taking a look. I’m happy to answer any questions!

Report

7d ago

Previous Sanctum Launches

SanctumPause before YouTube pulls you into another loop

Launched on July 16th, 2026

Forum Threads

p/sanctum-7

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13d ago

What usually pulls you into an unintended YouTube session?

Hi Product Hunt!

I built Sanctum after noticing that my problem wasn t YouTube itself. It was the moment when one intentional video quietly turned into 30 minutes of recommendations, Shorts, or aimless browsing.

Sanctum doesn t completely block YouTube. Instead, it adds small pauses at the moments when you re most likely to slip into autopilot, so you can decide whether you actually want to keep watching.

I d love to hear about your experience:

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