Scan a QR code once. Then lie back and play, pause, skip, change the volume, search and pick the next video from your phone, while the video stays on the big screen.
One click from the Chrome Web Store. It only activates on youtube.com and asks for nothing else.
Open a video, click the CouchTube icon and point your phone's camera at the code. The remote opens in your phone's browser. No app, no sign-up.
Play, pause, skip 10 seconds, volume, speed, captions, fullscreen, search, up next, live streams, sleep timer. Everything you'd do at the keyboard.
CouchTube is a tiny messenger between your phone and your browser. It sends button presses one way and "what's playing" the other way. That's the whole product.
The extension runs on youtube.com only and presses the same buttons you would.
A small server that forwards messages between the two, like a walkie-talkie channel. It stores nothing.
A plain web page with big buttons. Nothing is installed and nothing is remembered.
Each session gets a random code. It lives in the QR on your monitor, so only someone who can see your screen can pair. Click "New code" and every old code dies instantly.
The extension, the relay and the phone page are all on GitHub under the MIT license. No build step, no minified blobs: what you read is what runs.
The extension asks for permission to run on youtube.com and nothing else. Pause it from the popup, or remove it in one click, whenever you like. Prefer full control? Run your own relay with one command.
It can see and act on youtube.com tabs, nothing else: that is the only permission it asks for. It never reads your Google account, cookies or passwords, and the relay server has no database. All the code is public on GitHub, so you (or a developer you trust) can verify every line.
No. Scanning the QR code opens a normal web page in your phone's browser. It works on iPhone and Android, and you can add it to your home screen if you want a shortcut.
No. Messages go through the relay, so mobile data works too. Only the screen matters: whoever can scan the code can control that browser.
Only if they scan the code on your screen. Codes are random, unguessable, and you can click "New code" in the popup at any time to cut off every connected phone.
Yes. Ads show a Skip button on your phone when YouTube offers one. Live streams get a "Jump to live" button. Playlists show up in "Up next".
No. It is a few small scripts that only run on youtube.com and send a tiny message about once per second while a video plays.
Edge and Brave work today, since they run Chrome extensions. Firefox is planned. Safari is not, for now.
Yes. The relay is a single Node.js file. Run it, point the extension at it in the popup's settings, and nothing ever touches our server.
No. It is an independent, open-source project. YouTube is a trademark of Google LLC.
Free, open source, no account. Twenty seconds from install to lying down.
Add to Chrome, it's freeNot on the Web Store yet? Install from GitHub in two minutes.