Yougroup

Overview

Yougroup is a local-first browser extension for grouping YouTube channels by topic and watching them together. Add related channels to a List, open a single List or All Lists as a combined Upload Feed, and shape a playback queue around your choices. Google sign-in and an active trial or subscription are required to use it.

Lists, cached uploads, and watched markers stay in browser extension storage. RSS refresh needs no YouTube Data API key; an optional key resolves @handles and /user/ URLs and enriches cached uploads with fields such as duration and view count. The hosted account service manages Google identity and Stripe plan status.

Lists and feeds

• Create, rename, and delete Lists; add a channel by ID or URL, with optional key-based handle resolution.
• Open one List or All Lists, the UI’s synthetic deduplicated Feed over every List’s membership.
• Filter Shorts, hide watched videos, choose newest/popular or interleaved playback, and open a queue in YouTube.
• Import selected Lists from a YouTube Subscription Manager JSON export.

Refresh and playback

• RSS-first refresh discovers recent uploads for canonical channel IDs without spending Data API quota.
• An optional Data API phase adds metadata and supports handle resolution and popularity-based ordering.
• Resumable Refresh Jobs persist phases, counters, checkpoints, and errors so the service worker can continue after a restart.
• An hourly stale-channel alarm and configurable refresh threshold keep the local cache current.

Privacy

Yougroup stores Google account details and Stripe subscription status in its hosted service. Lists, cached uploads, watched markers, refresh state, quota accounting, and the optional YouTube API key stay in extension-local storage and do not sync to the account.

Availability

The Yougroup landing page is deployed at yougroup.thoughtbubble.dev, and the new account app is running at yougroup-app-dev.thoughtbubble.dev. The planned paid offer is $2.99/month or $24/year, with a 14-day trial requiring a payment card. Production billing and a public browser store release are not yet verified; the extension is currently tested as an unpacked build.

Technology Stack

• TypeScript on Bun; React 19 with TanStack Virtual
• Tailwind CSS v4 and Radix UI
• Chrome Manifest V3 side panel, service worker, and content script
• fast-xml-parser for YouTube RSS; optional YouTube Data API v3

Links

• Landing page: yougroup.thoughtbubble.dev