Built By A Parent, For Parents
TubeTimeout was born out of real-life chaos, tantrums, and the quest for screen time sanity.
No logins, no complicated apps. Just one simple way to set YouTube screen limits across all your kids’ devices.
It's is a compact, secure box that lets parents take charge of YouTube time across every screen in the home — TVs, tablets, phones and more.
Simply plug it into your network, choose which devices belong together (for example, all living-room screens or each child’s tablet and phone), and set a shared daily or weekly limit for each group.
There’s no software or apps to install on your devices, no accounts to create, and absolutely no subscriptions — just private, take-charge control based on open-source, so you decide exactly how much YouTube your kids can enjoy.
Our Story
Empowering Parents for Online Safety
Hi, I’m Richard — dad to two brilliant, energetic kids aged 8 and 10. Like a lot of parents, my partner Sammy and I noticed something strange happening when our kids were glued to YouTube.
One minute they were learning cool stuff about ancient history or Minecraft tricks, and the next they were spiraling into a wormhole of flashy, fast-paced videos that seemed more like sugar for the brain than food for thought.
We’d ask them to put their shoes on or come down for dinner, and you’d think we’d asked them to climb Everest barefoot. Tantrums, squabbles, zoning out… all the classics.
It didn’t take long to spot the pattern: the longer they watched, the harder it was to get them to switch gears. And it wasn’t just our imagination — any parent knows when something is up with their kids.
At first, we tried everything that was already out there — Apple’s screen time tools, router-level parental controls, the YouTube Kids app… but none of them really solved the problem.
The kids would just hop from one device to another, try different apps and web browsers, or sneak off to a different TV to keep the YouTube stream going.
And honestly, I didn’t want to block it completely as YouTube can be amazing when used well. So, I decided to build a tool that actually worked for families like ours.
That’s how TubeTimeout was born — a little project built on a Raspberry Pi to give us control over all the YouTube access in the house, from phones to iPads to smart TVs.
No need to uninstall apps or create dozens of different accounts. Just set a weekly time limit, group the kids’ devices together, and let them decide how to use their screen time wisely.
And when their time’s up? YouTube slows to a crawl, making it just frustrating enough to nudge them offline without sparking meltdowns.
I’ve been developing software and services in the cloud for 20+ years, but this was easily one of the most satisfying things I’ve built, because it made life at home so much better.
Now I’m sharing it, in case it helps other parents out there who just want a bit more calm, a bit more control, and a bit less negotiating with tiny screen addicts.
If you’re curious about the full story, including some of the tech experiments that didn’t work so well, check out the full blog post here.
The Team
Meet the Family
Richard, Sammy & The Kids