Show HN: KidScreen, a finite YouTube shelf chosen by parents | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: KidScreen, a finite YouTube shelf chosen by parents

kidscreen.app

43 pointsTintly63 comments

I’d be in the market for this, but didn’t get enough info to sign up.

My first questions were: - do I need a YouTube account? - do I need a premium YouTube account? - can I use it on my tv? - and more generally, how does it work? (Which should answer all above)

Current solution is: download YouTube videos my son is interested in to Plex, watch them on the tv (or iPad)

I also have YouTube premium, but barely use it.

Same for me. I also download videos and put them on a USB stick plugged into the TV.

KidScreen is not an offline or download solution like USB or Plex; it streams public videos through the embedded YouTube player. Its narrower purpose is to make the parent’s approved list the child’s default shelf.

KidScreen is a free web app: a parent creates a family, adds a child, and pastes the exact YouTube links they want on that child’s shelf. The child signs in once with separate child credentials. KidScreen does not require a YouTube or Premium account for ordinary public videos that allow embedding. A compatible TV browser may work, but KidScreen is not a native TV app and I have not tested every TV platform.

YouTube Kids in theory solves all my problems, the issue is that it's garbage software where the most important features are broken. For example I recently went on a long trip and grabbed the kids tablet. Only to discover after leaving the house, that all the previously downloaded videos were gone, and all the new ones that the app had chosen from among my whitelisted channels had "failed to download", despite having been at home on the wifi for weeks, so without internet connectivity, the app had nothing at all.

As others have pointed out, the things I am looking for in a YouTube kids replacement is quite specific and detailed, and the landing page provides not an iota of evidence that I will get that.

The solution I came up with was yt-dlp.

I tried Netflix as well, worked great on the flight, but as soon as we got to the destination and connected to WiFi "This content is not available in your location". That was with downloaded content. Restarting the app with WiFi off did not allow it to play ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

yt-dlp gives you much stronger offline control. KidScreen is streaming-only today and remains subject to YouTube availability, embedding, and regional restrictions. If reliable offline playback is essential, KidScreen is not a replacement for your setup.

May I ask how you solve it with ytdlp.

That is fair. KidScreen does not solve offline playback or broken YouTube downloads. It solves a narrower problem: the parent chooses exact videos and the child gets a small, finite shelf instead of search or an endless feed. The landing page should explain that scope and its limitations before asking anyone to sign up.

Hey i'd love to use it but may be add a little more description in the landing page to build confidencee before a parent can signup for the service! That has kept me away from signing up TBH. The premise of the product seems promising. I was thinking of building a whole device for parents to block content on the https traffic level

On the webpage - "Learn more in your parent account: About."

So I click About and it asks me to login or create an account.

Instant nope from me.

That is a good catch. I assumed a free sign-up would feel like low friction, but putting the explanation behind an account hides the information people need before they can trust the product. I should make that explanation public. Thanks for pointing it out.

You are right. Being free does not remove the need for trust. I built KidScreen for my own family and released it for other parents, but the public page should clearly show how it works, who built it, what it stores, and where its limits are. Thank you for the direct feedback.

Hey, thanks for all the comments.

I made KidScreen for my two daughters. They both have their own iPads, and I wanted them to have separate video shelves with only the YouTube videos I chose for them.

How it works is very simple: I create one family, add my children, and paste YouTube links into each child’s shelf. Each child has their own login and sees only their own videos. I put KidScreen on the Home Screen as a web app, block regular YouTube and other video sources with Screen Time, and allow KidScreen with youtube-nocookie.com. So when they open it, there is no search, no endless feed, and no random videos to choose from — only what I added.

KidScreen is free. I built it for my own family first, and if it is useful for other parents, I will keep developing it. It will stay free. It is a web app, not a native TV or mobile app, and it does not download videos for offline use. It can work in a browser on a TV, but it was not made specifically for TV.

In my own setup I have not seen ads or recommendations. But the main point is simple: no video appears on the child’s shelf because of an algorithm. It is there because the parent added it.

A lot of you are right about one thing: the main page does not explain this well enough. I thought people would just try it because it is free, but I understand why someone wants to know exactly how it works before signing up. I will move the About section to the main page, add screenshots, and explain the product better.

Agree with other commenters this needs a better landing page with some screens or a video demo. Especially for a product where building trust with your family would be a necessity.

Agreed. Trust should not depend on registering first. Screenshots, a short demo, a clear explanation of the flow, and the YouTube limitations belong on the public page. “Free” and “simple” are not enough on their own.

Friction is the problem with something like this. If my kid grabs my phone, or uses the LG TV Youtube App, or the Apple TV app, or the PlayStation 5, can all of those default to KidScreen?

If it can't solve all those, there's absolutely no utility for me. If I were willing to become the kind of authoritarian taskmaster that tightly controls which devices my kids use to watch something at all times, I would already not need KidScreen.

> If it can't solve all those, there's absolutely no utility for me.

To be fair, how the hell is that something an APP can do?

Yeah that's what I'm saying. So why are we making apps that pretend to do it?

Does this?

It is a browser-based, parent-curated shelf that works together with parental controls.

I agree that claiming universal control would be misleading. KidScreen does not intercept other apps or devices; it only controls the shelf inside KidScreen. Whether that narrower model is useful depends on how a family manages the child’s device.

KidScreen cannot become the default inside the native YouTube apps on phones, Apple TV, PlayStation, or other platforms. It works only where the child opens the KidScreen web app in a compatible browser, and the parent still needs device-level controls to restrict other routes to YouTube. It solves a smaller problem than universal device control, so it will not fit every family.

Looks interesting but I would want some public information about how it works and who is doing it, etc... The complete lack of any available details must be stopping many potential users.

You are right. A family product should explain who built it, how child access works, what data it stores, and what the embedded YouTube player can still show. I am an independent parent building this for my own family first, and the current public page is too sparse.

Technically, 0 is a finite number. It's also the optimal number of youtube videos for a kid.

While excessive screen time can certainly be a problem and the specific content matters there is nothing inherently wrong with a small amount of age-appropriate YouTube content consumption.

That is my view as well. KidScreen does not prescribe how much a child should watch; it gives the parent control over the exact videos available.

It is for families who already choose to use some video and want tighter control over exactly what is available.

Interested in this, but to work on an ipad that has youtube.com blocked via ScreenTime I imagine it probably wont work (unless you unblock youtube.com and the youtube becomes accessible via the browser). Unless they have found a way round this problem?

Yes — this is exactly how I use it on my children’s iPads. I install KidScreen as a Home Screen web app, block the regular YouTube website and other video sources with Screen Time, and allow KidScreen together with its `youtube-nocookie.com` player. The child opens only KidScreen and sees the shelf I prepared.

I like the idea.

I solved the issue by building an extra Android Launcher for the kids, where you can add apps and videos, but then you have the problem that you can't configure your own launcher on all tablets (e.g. Fire Tablets).

Nice approach. I chose a web app for the same portability reason: the child signs in once in a browser and KidScreen can be added to the Home Screen. That reduces platform-specific work, but it still does not guarantee that every device or TV browser supports YouTube embeds correctly.

The issue I found is that there is good content that isn't traditional kids content. Engineering videos, how it works etc.

So I vibe coded my own solution over a couple weekends that runs on my LG TV.

Exactly. A parent can add any public, embeddable YouTube video they consider appropriate — it does not have to be labelled as children’s content. Engineering videos, documentaries, and “how it works” videos fit the model well. KidScreen does not classify the content; the parent makes that decision.

How does it stop Youtube from showing recommendations?

KidScreen removes the YouTube browsing experience: there is no search, no feed, and no algorithm choosing the next video for the child. I add the exact videos myself, and the child sees only that finite shelf. On my children’s iPads I use KidScreen as a Home Screen web app and block the other video sources with Screen Time. In my testing I have not seen ads or recommendations in this setup.

Doesn’t that rather defeat the point? Aren’t kids supposed to discover for themselves which things they like?

I love this! Thank you OP.

Feature suggestion: Invite another parent on the Family page. It would be cool if both my wife and I were able to add approved videos.

Thanks — that is a useful request. Co-parent access is not exposed in the current version. Separate parent invitations would let both adults manage the same shelves without sharing one account, and that is the direction I would take if I add it.

Lots missing on the landing page for me to trust this vs. just building my own using YouTube-dl.

It'd be so cool if you could customize the shelf according to kids' interests etc

That is already the manual model: the parent creates a separate shelf for each child and adds videos based on that child’s interests. There is intentionally no automated personalization or recommendation system deciding what to add next.

Sell this to school districts. This is what Google should have done from the beginning.

That is an interesting direction. KidScreen is currently built for individual families, not school administration, so it does not yet have the provisioning, classroom management, or compliance features schools would need. If you have a specific school workflow in mind, I would be interested to hear it.

For what I’ve seen at my kids school: the district leaves all of “safesearch” YouTube open for the few dozen videos teachers will use during the school year. But since they don’t control safe search filters sometimes those videos get blocked meanwhile porn, grooming, gaming, and all kinds of other things get through.

I’ve always thought this should be a whitelist tied to students enrolled in particular classes. Videos could be chosen to be universally available for all students by district admin, available to all students at a school by site admin, or available to students in a class by individual teachers.

YouTube Kids already has a whitelist mode. We use it all the time for our 8 year old.

YouTube Kids whitelist mode is useful, but KidScreen starts from a different idea: I add exact videos one by one to each child’s separate shelf. I am not approving an entire channel or asking an algorithm to select from a catalogue. Nothing is added to the KidScreen shelf unless the parent puts it there.

Or you can give your kids books to read.

So, are you saying there is zero value in _any_ youtube video for kids?

Books are great too. I do not see books and video as mutually exclusive; a small amount of parent-selected educational or creative video can be useful. KidScreen is about making that choice intentional, not maximizing screen time.

I, too, am a parent of a toddler who would like more control over what YouTube feeds my kid's brain.

It's almost as if YouTube should be the responsible party here, and yet... isn't.

I'm on the verge of building my own frontend to YT and using open source tooling to download only what I approve of, since their algo keeps shoving shit en masse at my kid.

Oh, and I have no idea what this app does, and don't care to sign up just to find out. Not cool.

While I agree YouTube Kids is a mess and needs to be better-curated, we as parents are always the responsible party when it comes to what our kids consume.

Agreed. KidScreen does not replace parental responsibility, supervision, or device-level controls. It is a convenience layer that makes a parent-approved shelf easier to maintain and use.

That is fair criticism. If someone has to register just to understand what the product does, the public page has failed. The short version is: a parent adds exact YouTube URLs, and the child gets a finite shelf with no search or endless feed around the official player. I should make the flow, data boundaries, and limitations public before sign-up.

Yes, that makes more sense now! There was no clue of that before the forced signup. One would like to know what one is even signing up for, you know? Give me a tease at least! haha. Good luck!

is this an app? web tool?

It is a free web app and installable PWA, not a native App Store application. The parent manages the shelves in a browser; the child signs in once on their device and can add KidScreen to the Home Screen.