About talavo

talavo is built by an independent two-person studio. We make a free iOS browser that strips the engagement-engineered UI out of the modern web — YouTube ads, Shorts, comments, recommendation rails, autoplay — and gives you the part you came for.

Why we built this

We watched friends and family lose hours to YouTube and TikTok-style feeds they didn't actually want to watch. The cleanest fix on iOS wasn't willpower or paid subscriptions — it was removing the entry points to the dopamine loops at the browser level.

We started talavo as a side project in 2024. By 2025 it had grown into the full-time work of two people. We're self-funded, no investors, no acquisition pitch deck. The app is free because we don't want to put the user's attention behind a paywall — that would be hypocritical given what the app exists to fix.

What we believe

  • Attention is finite. If a product gets more valuable the more time you spend on it, you're probably the product.
  • Defaults matter more than willpower. The right default is whatever lets you do what you came to do and leave.
  • Privacy is structural, not promotional. If your business model depends on user data, no privacy policy will save you from the incentive.
  • Indie can ship faster. Two people, no meetings, no roadmap committee. Most features that ship were dogfooded on our own phones for weeks before reaching the store.

How we make money

One brief ad when you open the app. That's it. The optional $0.99/month Premium tier removes that single ad and nothing else — every distraction filter, ad blocker, and customization works identically on free and Premium.

No data collection, no third-party trackers, no anonymized browsing-history sale. We don't have a server that sees your URLs. Settings sync via iCloud (Apple's encrypted sync, not our servers). The privacy claims are structural, verifiable by network inspection, and don't require trust.

Where we're going

Short list: more sites filtered (Instagram web, Reddit, TikTok web), more granular control over what disappears, better cross-device sync, and translations for languages we don't yet cover. The roadmap is user-led — most decisions come from Discord and Reddit feedback rather than analytics.

Get in touch

Bug reports, feature requests, partnership pitches: /support has the email and Discord links. We read everything; replies typically within 1-2 days.