New Features

Default Educational Channels
Ten curated educational channels are now pre-loaded when you install the extension — no manual setup needed to get started:
- MIT OpenCourseWare (@mitocw)
- Stanford Online (@stanfordonline)
- Mathematical Monk (@MathematicalMonk)
- 3Blue1Brown (@3blue1brown)
- Google DeepMind (@deepmind)
- Yale University (@yale)
- NPTEL (@nptelhrd)
- Carnegie Mellon University (@cmu)
- fast.ai (@fastai)
- StatQuest with Josh Starmer (@statquest)

Restore Defaults Button
A new "Restore defaults" button in the Settings page re-adds any default channels that were accidentally removed, without touching your custom channels.

Default Channel Badges
Default channels are now marked with a subtle blue "default" label in your channel list so you can easily tell them apart from channels you've added yourself.



Firefox Fixes

Extension no longer requires manual activation on YouTube
Fixed an issue where the extension appeared inactive on YouTube pages until the toolbar icon was clicked. The background event page is now reliably woken before storage is accessed, and
any YouTube tabs open at browser startup are automatically rechecked once the background is ready.

Resolved optional host permission prompt
Fixed a Firefox MV3 behaviour where the YouTube site permission was shown as an optional toggle users had to manually enable. The extension now requests this permission automatically the
first time you open the popup — a one-time browser confirmation dialog — after which it is granted permanently with no further action needed.

YouTube Guardian 1.2.0 → 1.2.1

New Features

• Hide Search Suggestions — Hides autocomplete suggestions when using the YouTube search bar, reducing distractions while searching.
• Hide Home Feed — Visiting youtube.com now shows a clean, empty page. Your search results are completely unaffected.
• Hide Suggested Videos — Removes the related videos sidebar while watching, keeping you focused on what you chose to watch.
• Time Lock — Lock all settings until a specific date and time. Once active, the lock cannot be bypassed — not even with a password. Perfect for setting study or focus sessions in
  advance.
• Quick Lock — Lock all settings for 1, 4, or 8 hours directly from the settings page or the popup, without needing to pick a specific time.
• Popup shortcuts — Hide search suggestions, home feed, and suggested videos can now be toggled directly from the extension popup without opening the full settings page.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed audio still being audible when YouTube Shorts is blocked. YouTube's player aggressively resumes playback after being paused — the fix now intercepts every play attempt at the
  browser level, ensuring audio is silenced for the entire duration of the block.