Tired of endlessly scrolling through YouTube to find something to watch? Channel Surfer is a new website that repackages YouTube feeds and lets you browse and watch them as if they were part of a cable TV channel guide.
Channel Surfer’s interface uses a familiar Electronic Program Guide as seen on DVRs and FAST TV, broken down into categories such as sports, news and AI. It shows up to 24 hours of programming at a time, but, unlike a DVR, you can’t record from it.
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On a computer, mobile phone, or PC, the website lets you either tap a channel name to watch content or use the arrow buttons to channel-surf through different categories.
The site went live recently, and its developers say it attracted 10,000 users on its first day. Developer Steven Irby told News that he built the site because he was tired of scrolling and being subject to the YouTube algorithm.
“I miss channel surfing and not having to decide what to watch,” Irby said. “I want to just sit and tune in to what’s on and not think about what to watch next.”
The number of channels is limited to 40 right now, and the content appears to be manually programmed. It’s new and not especially polished yet. If you pause the site, I discovered that the content can start playing again at random.
YouTube, which began over 20 years ago before being acquired by Google, is one of the most popular streaming sites on the internet with over 2.7 billion monthly users. It’s home to millions of channels ranging from child-friendly content to British game show Taskmaster and popular influencer Mr. Beast.
