How to stop wasting time on YouTube

Quick answer

You open it to watch one thing. Then it's a Short, then a recommended video, then some guy reviewing a knife. An hour's gone.

What 125x is: 125x is a web app at 125x.app. You connect your YouTube subscriptions, and it gives you a feed of the latest videos from the channels you follow, each with a summary: a verdict, the 5 key takeaways, and the spoiler, plus Actionable and Lessons tabs with more tips. You read that and decide what's actually worth opening.

We went through a pile of threads where people described how they actually cut back. These are the tips that kept showing up, plus a few of ours.

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Tips from people who cut back

Bookmark Subscriptions, skip Home. A lot of people set their YouTube bookmark straight to the subscriptions page so they never land on the recommendations.
Pause or clear watch history. Several people said turning off watch history left the Home page basically blank, which killed the binge.
Use the browser on your phone. Deleting the app and using YouTube in a browser adds one extra step, and people said that one step cut how often they opened it.
Hide Shorts and the sidebar. Browser add-ons that hide Shorts, end screens and the Up Next column come up over and over.
Name the video before you open YouTube. Know what you came for. If there's nothing new you want, close it.
Set an app timer. Android's Digital Wellbeing and iPhone Screen Time can both cap YouTube per day.
Cut your subscriptions. One person went from over 300 channels to 95 by dropping dead channels, reaction channels and second channels.

Our own tips

Read first, watch second. Get the gist from a summary or the transcript, then only watch the ones that earn it.
Give every video a 60 second test. If it hasn't started delivering on the title by then, leave.
Batch it. Check your channels once a day at a set time, then close the tab.
Keep a 'worth it' list. Write down the 5 channels that actually changed something for you. Everything else is optional.
Save the long ones for when you'd watch TV anyway. Keep work hours for reading.

How 125x helps

125x is built around our first tip. Your subscriptions come in as a feed with a summary on each video and a verdict: watch, skim or skip.

Most days you read the feed in a few minutes and open one or two videos. There's no Shorts shelf and no recommendations from strangers, and a video that you scroll past 3 times drops out of the feed.

FAQ: questions people ask

How do I stop wasting time on YouTube?

Bookmark the Subscriptions page, turn off or pause watch history, hide Shorts, set an app timer, and read a summary before you decide to watch.

How do I stop wasting time on YouTube Shorts?

Hide Shorts with a browser add-on, and use YouTube in a browser on your phone so the Shorts tab is one step further away.

Does turning off watch history help?

Many people say yes. With history off, the Home page shows far fewer recommendations, so there's less to fall into.