Overview
- Developer Steven Irby launched Channel Surfer, a site that lets viewers browse a guide of themed channels and drop into YouTube videos mid-stream with a 24-hour schedule.
- At launch there are 40 curated channels spanning news, sports, music, movies, and tech-focused themes like AI, coding, space, retro tech, gadgets and gaming.
- Built as a static Next.js site using PartyKit and hosted on Cloudflare, it refreshes data daily via GitHub Actions and plays YouTube embeds that include YouTube’s ads.
- The service is free and offers a newsletter-gated workflow to import personal YouTube subscriptions via a bookmarklet and JSON paste.
- Irby reported more than 10,000 site views on day one and says he hopes to bring the app to TV platforms such as Fire TV and Google TV.