SponsorShield
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Open-source · self-hosted · no command line

Reclaim your TV from sponsors and ads.

SponsorShield is the skip console for your YouTube TVs. Pair every smart TV in your home, skip sponsor segments and ads automatically, and catch upstream breakages the moment they happen, all from one calm dashboard.

Get startedSee how it works
  • MIT-licensed
  • Runs on your network
  • Works with Roku, Fire TV, Chromecast, PlayStation
Skipping in real time

Five segments dodged, about four seconds reclaimed per skip, zero touches.

Skips sponsor segments, intros, outros, self-promo, and more across every paired TV.

Install to first paired device takes about five minutes.

Runs on your LAN. No cloud account, no telemetry, nothing leaves your network.

MIT-licensed and free. Community project, no SaaS bill to upsell to.

Why SponsorShield

The control panel for SponsorBlock skipping on every YouTube TV.

The core engine is powerful, but it lives in JSON files and SSH sessions. SponsorShield gives every part of it a face, and surfaces problems before you notice them on the TV.

  • Pair without the command line

    Auto-discover smart TVs on your network, or snap a photo of the 12-digit code on screen and let on-device OCR fill it in. No SSH, no editing JSON.

  • See what's being skipped

    Charts show sponsors vs ads skipped over 24h, 7d, 30d, time saved, and category breakdowns. Sortable incident log shows every skip, mute, and config change.

  • Catch breakages instantly

    When Google rotates a token or YouTube ships a schema change, you'll see a banner in the dashboard, not a black screen mid-episode. Re-pair in two taps.

  • Per-device overrides

    Skip sponsors aggressively in the living room. Mute ads but keep intros in the bedroom. Whitelist creators globally or per device. Every config field is mapped.

  • Yours, on your network

    One container, two processes: the Engine that talks to your TVs, and this dashboard. Single-admin auth via environment variables. Nothing leaves your LAN. No tracking, no cloud, no SaaS bill.

  • config.json compatible

    Every change writes to the same config.json the engine already reads, then hot-reloads the daemon. CLI users keep their muscle memory; the file is still the source of truth.

How it works

Three steps from “I have a TV” to “I never see sponsors again.”

  1. Install the container

    Pull the SponsorShield image to your home server, NAS, or Pi. Engine and dashboard run as two processes inside, talking over a Unix socket.

    docker compose up -d
  2. Pair your TVs

    Open the dashboard. Scan your LAN: devices running the YouTube TV app reply with metadata. Or enter a 12-digit code, or photo-scan it.

    Living Room Roku · 192.168.1.42
Master Bed Firestick · 192.168.1.58
  3. Tune and forget

    Pick which categories to skip, set per-device overrides if you want them, then close the tab. Re-open it next week to see how much TV time you got back.

    31h 12m saved this week

vs CLI

Same engine. None of the JSON-editing.

Same engine, same config.json, same skips. Two ways to drive it. Here is how they compare.

TaskCommand-lineWith SponsorShield
Pair a new smart TVRun the CLI in pairing mode, paste the 12-digit code into the terminalAuto-discover on LAN, or photo-scan the code from your phone
Adjust skip categoriesEdit config.json, restart the daemon, hope nothing typo'dToggle each category. Saves and hot-reloads automatically.
Tune audio sync per deviceMath out the offset, edit the device entry by handDrag the slider in the device drawer. −2.0 to +2.0 seconds.
Know when something's brokenNotice the TV is showing sponsors again, grep the logsBanner in the dashboard the moment the token revokes
See what's been skippedTail the log file, eyeball the timestamps24h, 7d, 30d charts, sortable activity log, category breakdown

FAQ

Questions worth answering up front.

No. SponsorShield is a hard fork of iSponsorBlockTV, not an add-on to it. The container ships the skip engine and the dashboard together. One image, one docker run, no upstream install.

Get your TV time back.

Five minutes to install, fifteen seconds to pair the first device, and you'll never sit through another “this video is sponsored by…” again.

Get startedSee the features