You decide what enters your head. Not an algorithm.
Information Diet strips YouTube and X down to search-only. No home feed, no Shorts, no trends, no rabbit holes — just what you looked for.
“Search is a request. A feed is a suggestion nobody asked for.”
Same site. Different behavior.
Nothing about YouTube or X is blocked — the sites still work exactly as they do today. Information Diet only removes the parts built to keep you scrolling. Try it above: switch the site, then switch the state.
What it removes
Every item below is its own toggle in the popup — turn any single one back on, or pause the whole extension for 15, 30, or 60 minutes.
YouTube
- Home feedReplaced with a plain search box, no recommended grid.
- ShortsHidden on the home shelf, sidebar, and in search results. A direct Shorts link still plays, in the normal player.
- RecommendedSidebar suggestions and end-screen cards on the watch page are hidden.
- CommentsOptional, off by default.
X
- Home timelineThe For You / Following feed is replaced with the same plain search box.
- TrendsThe Trending Now sidebar and Explore's trending list are hidden.
- Who to followHidden in the sidebar only; people search and your own follower lists are untouched.
Search results, permalinks, and profiles you navigate to directly still work exactly as normal. Only the algorithmic surfaces are removed.
No accounts. No servers. No analytics.
Information Diet doesn't phone home, because there's nowhere for it to phone. There's no backend at all — it's a content script and a popup, running entirely on your machine.
- Settings, the daily "blocked" count, and pause timers live in Firefox's local storage — never synced, never uploaded.
- The extension only runs on youtube.com, x.com, and twitter.com — nowhere else.
- No accounts, no sign-in, no tracking scripts of any kind.
Settings are read and written on your machine only.
data_collection_permissions: { required: ["none"] }
Questions
Does Information Diet block YouTube or X entirely?
No. Both sites work exactly as before. Information Diet only removes the algorithmic surfaces — the home feed, Shorts, trends, and similar — while search, permalinks, and profiles you navigate to directly stay untouched.
Does it collect or transmit any data?
No. There is no server, no account, and no analytics. Settings and the daily blocked-item count are stored locally in Firefox using browser.storage.local and never leave your machine. Its Firefox Add-ons listing declares data_collection_permissions: none.
Can I turn individual features back on?
Yes. Every feature — hiding Shorts, hiding the home feed, hiding trends, and so on — is its own toggle in the popup, per site. You can also pause the whole extension for 15, 30, or 60 minutes if you need the feed for something specific.
Will it stop working if YouTube or X changes their layout?
It's possible, since both sites update their internal page structure fairly often. When that happens, only the CSS selectors need updating, not the underlying logic, so fixes are usually quick.
Is Information Diet available for Chrome?
Not currently. It's built and tested for Firefox only.
Stop the feed. Start searching.
Free, open, and it takes about ten seconds to install.