NoaLingua Answer
Studying on YouTube without the rest of YouTube
One key that dims the recommendations, the comments and the sidebar
Press Z, or turn on Focus mode in Settings → Appearance. Everything around the player dims — recommendations, comments, the sidebar — leaving the video and the subtitle box. The state is remembered, so a study session does not begin by dismissing the same page furniture every time.
Short answer Focus mode (Z) dims everything around the player and remembers that you turned it on.
Step by step
Doing it with NoaLingua
- 1
Press Z on any video
Focus mode turns on immediately. The page around the player is dimmed rather than removed, so nothing about the page breaks and nothing you might need has disappeared — it has just stopped competing.
- 2
Or set it once in Settings
Settings → Appearance has the same switch. It is off by default: an extension that rearranges YouTube the moment it is installed is an extension people distrust before they have used it.
- 3
Press Z again to bring the page back
The state persists between videos, so if you study with it on, it is on the next time too. This is a small thing that matters at the start of a session, which is where sessions are lost.
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The detail behind the NoaLingua answer
What focus mode is actually for
The recommendation rail is engineered to be more interesting than whatever you are currently watching. That is fine when you are watching for pleasure and actively costly when you are working through a video in a language you do not yet speak — because that video is, by design, harder than the alternatives being offered.
Dimming the surroundings is a small intervention with a specific target: the moment at the end of a difficult sentence when the eye drifts right. It does not block anything, and it does not pretend to be a productivity system.
The parts that do not disappear
The Learn button in the corner of the page stays, because it is the way back into practice and it carries the count of words waiting for review. The subtitle box and its control strip stay, obviously. The player's own controls stay.
Focus mode also does not touch autoplay, does not stop the next video loading, and does not claim to be a blocker. If the problem is that you open YouTube and lose an hour before you study anything at all, this is not the tool for that and it will not pretend to be.
More questions people ask NoaLingua
Does focus mode work on Netflix?
It is a YouTube-page feature — Netflix's watch page has no comments or recommendation rail beside the player to dim. The subtitle box, word cards, replay and shadowing all work on Netflix.
Does it hide the video title and channel?
Everything around the player is dimmed rather than deleted, so the page still reads as YouTube and everything is still there when you look for it.
Can I use full screen instead?
You can, and the subtitle box follows you into full screen — the transcript panel floats over the player there, because YouTube's sidebar does not exist to dock into. Focus mode is for when you want the page but not its furniture.
Where this is documented on NoaLingua
Related NoaLingua answers
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