NukeYT

A Chrome/Brave extension that can block YouTube Shorts, watch-page recommendations, or nuke YouTube entirely — with a PIN-protected popup UI so the settings can't be casually undone.

Features

• Nuke YouTube — replaces the entire YouTube page with a clean "YouTube is Nuked" screen
• Nuke Shorts — hides all Shorts thumbnails, shelf sections, sidebar links, and redirects away from /shorts/ URLs
• Nuke Recommendations — hides the watch-page sidebar, end-screen suggestions, and autoplay overlays
• Popup UI — click the extension icon to toggle each feature on or off
• PIN protection — turning a feature off requires a 4-digit PIN; turning it back on is always free
• Change PIN — update your PIN at any time from the popup (requires the current PIN first)
• Live updates — changes in the popup take effect on any open YouTube tab instantly, no refresh needed

Install (Developer Mode)

1. Open chrome://extensions (or brave://extensions).
2. Enable Developer mode (top-right toggle).
3. Click Load unpacked.
4. Select the nukeshorts folder.

How to Use

Toggles

Open the popup by clicking the extension icon in the toolbar. Three toggle switches are shown:

Toggle	What it does
Nuke YouTube	Replaces YouTube entirely with a "nuked" page
Nuke Shorts	Hides Shorts thumbnails, shelves, nav links, /shorts/ redirects
Nuke Recommendations	Hides watch-page sidebar, end-screen cards, autoplay overlays

Nuke Shorts and Nuke Recommendations are on by default. Nuke YouTube is off by default.

PIN setup

Turning a toggle off for the first time will prompt you to create a 4-digit PIN before the change is applied. After a PIN is set:

• Turning off any feature → enter your PIN on the numpad
• Turning on any feature → no PIN needed
• Changing your PIN → click Change PIN, verify your current PIN, then enter and confirm the new one

The PIN is never stored in plain text — it is hashed with SHA-256 (Web Crypto API) before being saved to chrome.storage.local.

File Structure

nukeshorts/
├── manifest.json      # Extension manifest (MV3)
├── content.js         # Injected into YouTube; manages blocking CSS + DOM enforcement
├── popup.html         # Popup UI markup
├── popup.css          # Popup styles (shadcn-style dark, black & white)
├── popup.js           # Popup logic: toggles, PIN state machine, storage sync
└── icon*.png          # Extension icons (16, 32, 48, 128 px)

Technical Notes

• Dynamic CSS injection — content.js creates a <style> element synchronously at document_start and updates its content based on stored settings. This means blocking is active before any page content paints, with no flash of unblocked content.
• Nuke YouTube overlay — when enabled, a full-page overlay replaces all YouTube content with a clean "YouTube is Nuked" message.
• SPA navigation — a MutationObserver watches for DOM changes and re-enforces rules after YouTube's client-side navigation.
• Periodic sweep — a setInterval runs every 1.5 s as a safety net for lazily-loaded content.
• Storage — settings (ytBlocked, shortsBlocked, recsBlocked, pinHash) are persisted in chrome.storage.local. The content script listens via chrome.storage.onChanged for instant cross-tab updates.
• Permissions used — storage, host_permissions: https://www.youtube.com/*

Caveats

YouTube periodically changes its internal component names. If blocking stops working, the CSS selectors and custom-element names in content.js may need updating.