Villow has a lot of features. This is the thinking underneath them: what Fix the Web believes a healthier way to watch looks like, and why each part of Villow works the way it does. Nicholas Nucifora, Fix the Web's founder, designed and built Villow around these ideas.
Control, not prohibition
Villow doesn't ban recommendations or pretend algorithms are evil. Some people want to see what's popular, or go down a rabbit hole on a topic they love, and that's fine. The problem isn't that recommendations exist. It's that people have no say in how much, when or what kind.
So Villow's answer is always more options, clearly presented, never fewer choices.
We're not taking anything away. We're handing you the controls.
Better time, not a guilt trip
Villow isn't built to make anyone watch less. It's built so the time you spend on YouTube is time you actually enjoy and find worth it. When it is, great. When it isn't, Villow helps you notice, through your own ratings, a clear picture of your time and your own to-do list, and makes it easy to go and do something you'd enjoy more.
That might become less time. Or it might just mean better time. The goal is to help people focus on their lives instead of escaping them, and to leave the choice with them.
Make every minute worth it. You might find you want fewer of them.
Make the healthy choice the fun one
Healthy features only work if people actually use them. A subscription feed only wins against an algorithmic one if it's better to use. So Villow lets you tailor it channel by channel: how often each channel appears, what kinds of videos you want from it, and which lengths. When your feed is exactly what you want, you choose it over the endless loop without having to force yourself.
Reflection works the same way. On a phone, sorting your feed is a satisfying swipe, left to skip and right to save for later, and rating a finished video is a swipe too.
Healthy features only work if people use them. So we made them fun.
An algorithm that works for you
Villow does have an algorithm, just not the kind you're used to. After every video it asks one question: "Was this video worth your time?" Villow's suggestion system looks at those answers alongside what you skip, finish and spend time on. Then it suggests changes: unsubscribe from a channel you keep regretting, only see certain kinds of videos from it, check in on it less often, or give it a time limit.
Unlike an engagement algorithm, it works for you and shows its working. Every suggestion explains its reasons, waits until there's enough evidence, can be dismissed, and never suggests raising a limit. It isn't AI. It's a transparent set of rules pointed at your wellbeing rather than your watch time.
An algorithm that's on your side, and shows its working.
Reflection over restriction
Limits help, but the deeper goal is noticing. Villow's time page shows how long you watched, and also how much of that time you felt was worth it: by channel, by source, by hour and by day.
Seeing that most of your "not worth it" time happens late at night, from one source, is far more useful than a single screen-time number.
A shared picture of the world
Algorithmic feeds put everyone in a bubble of one, and when everyone's picture of reality is different, it gets harder to agree on anything.
Villow's home page can include Popular in Your Country Today, drawn from YouTube's country charts and limited to topics you choose. People in the same country see some of the same things. It's a small counterweight to the bubble, not a replacement for your own interests.
Your feed shouldn't be a bubble of one.
Social that brings people together
Social features make an app more compelling, and Villow embraces that, as long as the pull is towards people.
- Send a video to a friend and see whether they watched it, how much, and whether they liked it. Now you have something to talk about.
- Share your usage with friends, if you want to. Seeing that you use it a lot more than your friends is a gentle, human prompt to go and do something else.
- Watch together is coming. Coming soon
Built for friends, not followers.
Back to real life
Sometimes the best outcome of a video is closing the app and doing something. Villow imports your to-do list from Google Tasks or Todoist and puts it in front of you at natural stopping points: beside the video, when you hit a limit, when your feed is clear, on a break and at bedtime.
It goes further as a showcase. A creator whose video is about a cause could attach a real-world next step, like joining a local group or writing to a representative, right beside the video. The creator side of that has to live in YouTube Studio, so Villow can only show how it could work. Showcase
Sometimes the best thing a video can do is get you off the couch.
Your whole viewing picture, not surveillance
Phone screen-time tools only see one device. Villow works wherever you use it, and the extension adds the time you spend on YouTube itself in your browsers.
That isn't surveillance. It combines data that already exists, for you, in your own Villow, with no ads and nothing sold. To be precise about it: Villow sees Villow on any device, plus YouTube in browsers with the extension. It doesn't see other apps, and it isn't a device-wide screen-time tracker.
A vision: one day, this kind of combined, user-owned picture could exist across every platform.
Honest measurement
Villow refuses to invent data. The extension reports YouTube time as a daily total with no hourly breakdown, so the hourly chart leaves it out, and says so. Gaps in the timeline are labelled "break", never "sleep". Worth-it percentages only count videos you actually rated.
Built for people, by listening to people
Villow asks the people using it how it's going. There are check-ins at first impressions, after two weeks and after three months, plus a feedback form any time, all inside the app. They arrive as a gentle "Feedback ready" notice, never a pop-up that gets in your way.
These are optional, self-reported surveys, and they exist to improve the design. Responses from every Villow go to Fix the Web and shape what gets built next.
Built for people, by listening to people.
YouTube could do this too
Everything above was built on YouTube's public API and official embedded player, with no special access and no big team. That's the point.
Every control in Villow is something YouTube could build and switch on for everyone, far more easily than anyone outside could. Some Villow features aren't finished yet, and some, like creator calls to action, can only fully exist inside YouTube. They're included anyway, because they show how simple these improvements would be.
If we could build this from the outside, imagine what YouTube could do from the inside.
