Beta · unpacked build 0.1.0

Get the MindFlow beta

Same extension as the one on the front page, built for our study run. It differs from the everyday version in exactly one way, and it's a big one: while it's installed, it uploads a record of every YouTube Short you watch. Everything it sends is listed below — read it first, then decide.

v0.1.0 · unpacked Chrome & Edge, desktop 20 MB zip Uploads viewing data

What this build sends, and what you're agreeing to

MindFlow's everyday build is fully local and never contacts a server. This one does. The beta ships with the study switched on and there is no setting to turn it off: each YouTube Short you watch is uploaded to a research endpoint we run. Installing it is how you consent; uninstalling it is how you withdraw.

Who you are to us
A random ID

No account, no sign-in, no name or email. A random per-install identifier groups your records so retries don't duplicate.

Scope
YouTube Shorts only

The extension only holds permission for youtube.com, and only records Shorts you actually view.

Study design
50/50 per session

Each new Shorts session is assigned at random to filtering or to watch-only with no skipping. You aren't told which.

Retention
90 days

Records expire 90 days after they were last written and are removed by a daily purge job.

Uploaded, for each Short

  • →Which Short. Video ID, canonical URL, channel name, ID and URL.
  • →Its content. Title, description, hashtags, duration, on-screen text, and the caption or transcript track where YouTube exposes one.
  • →Public counters. View, like and comment counts as displayed.
  • →How you watched. Time visible, time watched, estimated percentage, replays, pauses, and whether you skipped it yourself.
  • →What you did. Like, dislike, share, subscribe, channel click, comment panel opened, description expanded, "not interested".
  • →Context. Tab focused, window focused, muted, volume, viewport size, timestamps.
  • →Study fields. A session ID, which side of the 50/50 that session landed on, and your random install ID.

Never uploaded

  • ✓Your name, email or Google/YouTube account. The extension never reads them.
  • ✓Anything outside YouTube Shorts. Other sites, other tabs and the rest of YouTube are not collected.
  • ✓Screenshots, video, audio or keystrokes. Nothing is captured from your screen or keyboard.
  • ✓Shorts MindFlow skipped for you. Those are discarded before they reach the upload queue.
  • ✓Your local stats and interest profile. Those stay in browser storage on your machine.
  • ✓Anything to a third party. No analytics, no ad network, no other vendor.

Pseudonymous, not anonymous. The records carry no identity we can trace back to you, but they are linked to each other by the random install ID, and the content of the Shorts you watch can itself be revealing. Treat it the way you'd treat handing over a browsing log for one corner of the web: fine if you're comfortable with the contents, worth skipping if you aren't.

Where it goes. Over HTTPS to a database we run on Cloudflare, in our own project account. Nobody else has access, and there is no way to read records back out of it. If a send fails it waits on your machine and retries later.

What we can't do. Since there's no account, we can't prove which records are yours, so there's no self-service deletion, and anything already uploaded can't be recalled. Uninstalling stops future uploads immediately and clears what's still queued on your device; what's already stored expires on the 90-day schedule.

You can leave at any point, without giving a reason, by removing the extension from chrome://extensions. Nothing else is asked of you. If you'd rather not take part but still want to try MindFlow, ask us for a local-only build. Same extension, with the uploading left out.

Download

MindFlow 0.1.0, beta build

The download is large because everything MindFlow needs is inside it — nothing gets fetched from a server later.

file mindflow-0.1.0-eval.zip size 20 MB target Chrome 116+ / Edge
sha256 9a763da0001970a11e4ae8f5fd436e7caf3703d0c735822ee5daa2085e7b0601
Download the zip
Installing it means you accept the notice above.
Install

Loading it into Chrome

MindFlow isn't on the Chrome Web Store, so it loads in developer mode. It takes about a minute and is fully reversible.

Unzip it somewhere permanent

Extract mindflow-0.1.0-eval.zip. You'll get a folder called mindflow-0.1.0 containing manifest.json.

Chrome loads it from this folder every time it starts, so keep it somewhere permanent, not in Downloads or the Trash.

Open the extensions page

Type chrome://extensions into the address bar and press Enter. On Edge it's edge://extensions.

Links to chrome:// pages can't be clicked from a website. Chrome blocks that deliberately, so you have to type it.

Turn on Developer mode

Use the Developer mode switch in the top-right of that page. Three new buttons appear along the top.

Click "Load unpacked"

In the file picker, select the mindflow-0.1.0 folder itself rather than the zip or a file inside it. Chrome needs the folder that directly contains manifest.json.

If you see "Manifest file is missing or unreadable", you're one level too high or too low. Pick the folder where you can see manifest.json.

Pin it to the toolbar

Click the puzzle-piece icon in Chrome's toolbar and pin MindFlow, so you can see the session status at a glance.

Open Shorts and use it normally

Go to youtube.com/shorts and watch as you usually would. There's nothing to configure and nothing to start. If a Shorts tab was already open, reload it once so the extension attaches.

The first Short may take a moment longer while things warm up. Whenever MindFlow isn't sure, it does nothing and the Short plays.

Questions

Before you install

Can I use the beta without sending any data?

Not this one. The uploading is built in and can't be switched off. Ask us for the local-only build instead; it makes no network requests at all.

Why does it need the Short's transcript and description?

That text is the only thing MindFlow has to go on, since it has to judge a Short before you reach it. The study uploads it so we can check whether its judgements were any good.

Will this get my YouTube account flagged, or change my recommendations?

MindFlow only presses YouTube's own next-video control, the same thing as hitting the down arrow, and never touches your account. That said, a Short it skips is a Short you didn't watch, and YouTube draws its own conclusions from watch history as always.

How well does it work?

Honestly, we don't know yet. That's what the study is for. Judging a Short on its own merits works on real examples we labelled by hand. Tuning that judgement to you is currently our best guess, because nobody has scrolled with it for real yet. The beta is how we find out.

Does it slow the browser down?

It reads text, not video, so there's very little to do. If it can't finish a judgement in time it gives up and the Short just plays. Playback never waits on it.

Chrome warns that the extension isn't from the Web Store.

Expected. Anything installed this way carries it, and Chrome may re-ask on restart. Keeping MindFlow enabled through those prompts is fine; dismissing them turns it off.

Who's behind this?

A three-person HCI Project Work group, 09-06: Miao Ruichen, Liu Haochen and Xiao Haoxuan. It's a student research prototype, not a product, and the data goes to the project's evaluation only.

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