The days of flipping through the channel guide are back
Remember the days of flipping through TV channels on a Saturday afternoon, looking for something good to watch? Well, now you can do it all over again, thanks to a new web app.
Named Channel Surfer, it is essentially a YouTube discovery tool that surfaces interesting videos by topic and organizes them by time, so you can’t actually skip. It’s also set up to look like a late-90s channel guide. Funny enough, while I was messing around with it, I heard the app make the familiar and very nostalgic ‘thunk’ of a 90’s CRT TV when changing channels.
There are currently more than 40 channels in the web-based app, grouped by content type (sports, AI, gaming, History, etc.).
Steven Irby, the designer, spoke with TechCrunch and explained why he developed it.
“I built Channel Surfer because I’m tired of the algorithms and indecision fatigue,” Irby said. “I miss channel surfing and not having to decide what to watch. I want to just sit and tune into what’s on and not think about what to watch next.”
Interestingly, Irby posted on X that the app had already broken 10,000 views on its first day.
OMG this blew up overnight! I got over 10,000 views on day 1. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/fY20ZVB3Xl
— Steven Irby (@StevenIrby) March 12, 2026
To be fair, there are plenty of these YouTube-based channel surfers out there. One in particular, created by Joey Cato, is “My Retro TV.” It features a neat frame that looks like an old TV and uses YouTube playlists of various content, allowing you to channel-surf through what was on TV in a given year (seriously, you can pick any specific year). This includes movie trailers, sports highlights, commercials, etc. It also isn’t limited to just the 2000s, too: My Retro TV goes all the way back to the 50’s.
As mentioned earlier, it is a pretty cool channel-flipper if you ever get that nostalgic itch to channel-surf, but I’m not sure I would use it every day. One way I could see myself using it is while working, to have some background noise, avoiding all the midday timeslot filler that is usually on TV.
Source: Engadget
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