A few weeks ago, we covered a website that presented a constantly shifting selection of MTV videos, chosen without any algorithmic input or recommendations. If that idea appealed, you may also enjoy a new project entitled Channel Surfer, which extends the recreating-the-experience-of-retro-viewing idea to YouTube as a whole.
For full retro cred, Channel Surfer presents its selections via an interface that’s laid out to look like a cable TV grid. The videos are grouped into 40 “channels”, each organized by subject matter. There’s a pleasantly diverse range of subjects on offer—everything from gardening to geopolitics, along with a bunch of music-centric channels, broken down into the music’s decade of origin. It’s not clear to what extent the channels’ content depends on your personal YouTube viewing history: my personal favorite channels were certainly well-represented on the grid, but this may just be a happy accident.
OMG this blew up overnight! I got over 10,000 views on day 1. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/fY20ZVB3Xl
— Steven Irby (@StevenIrby) March 12, 2026
The site also actually schedules the videos on the grid at their specified times, so while you can flick between “channels”—i.e. random YouTube videos—as much as you like, you can’t skip ahead or rewind. You can’t pause, either, presumably because this messes up the scheduling. This certainly makes you realize how convenient it is to be able to hit the left arrow key a few times to rewatch something you didn’t quite catch the first time around, and serves as a reminder of the fact that back in the day, if you missed something the first time around, you missed it forever.
The project is the work of British developer Steven Irby, who told TechCrunch that he built the site because he’s “tired of algorithms and indecision fatigue… I miss channel surfing and not having to decide what to watch.” While this isn’t necessarily a rationale to which everyone will be able to relate, there’s certainly something to be said for the experience of just discovering interesting videos by flicking between channels.
For what it’s worth, I found Channel Surfer to be most valuable as a list of stuff that looked like it could be cool, rather than as a full-blown viewing experience in its own right. I found myself looking through the titles listed on the grid and then going to “normal” YouTube to find the videos that caught my interest. I mean, “Boron based life—Aliens of the crystal deserts”? That sounds like something I want to watch now, not in an hour or two! So if you’ll excuse me…
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