Tired of Youtube Ads + outdated media players, so I built free universal player to fix it. Thoughts?

Hey everyone 👋

I’m a solo maker and I shipped my first product today after running into the same small but annoying problems again and again:

• Installing a heavy media player just to watch one local video

• Opening YouTube for a tutorial and getting pulled into recommendations

• Feeling uneasy opening random or downloaded pirated movie files

• Installing multiple extensions just to make YouTube usable

At some point it felt like watching a video required way too much setup.

So I built Playful — a browser-based media player that runs entirely in one tab.

It handles local files in a beautiful modern interface with 20+ Youtube style shortcuts for local media files, gives you a distraction-free ad-free YouTube with extra controls experience, and includes lo-fi / ambient sounds for focus.

No installs, no accounts, nothing uploaded anywhere.

I didn’t build this to chase a launch — I built it because I needed it.

Now I’m trying to figure out if this problem resonates with others too.

I’d love honest feedback from fellow makers:

• Do you still rely on VLC / native players for local files?

• Is YouTube distraction something you actively fight, or just accept?

• Would a browser-based player feel trustworthy to you?

If you’re curious, the Product Hunt page is here where I shared all the details and screenshots:

👉 https://www.producthunt.com/products/playful-2?utm_source=other&utm_medium=social

Really appreciate any thoughts — criticism included 🙏