History of Heartbeat

0:00 Heartbeat began in August 2023, when Freedom!, George Vanous's YouTube network, launched two small tools: Heartbeat Photos on Aug 3 and, on Aug 18, the Heartbeat Moments Chrome extension, which, as George put it that day, "lets you take any YouTube video and get all the moments in one place". Over the next two years the moments site moved from heartbeat.love to h.ki and grew into a publishing site with vikis (video wikis), Shorts, tools, riddles, trivia and pretty links. This timeline is dated from Freedom!'s own videos and h.ki's pages, as a visitor can check them on Nov 7, 2026.

Quick facts

Timeline

2023: Photos, Moments and heartbeat.love

0:00 The first launch was Heartbeat Photos, on Aug 3, 2023: "today we launch heartbeat photos for you it's a free tool that's a better way to view your photos by just hovering", reached by typing heartbeat.photos (Heartbeat Photos).

2:27 Fifteen days later came Heartbeat Moments, "our player two our second product launch this month". The extension read timestamps from a video's description and comments into a list beside the video, and the H key saved a new moment. Its Heart button opened the website, then at heartbeat.love, "the website for heartbeat moments" (Heartbeat Extension).

By Nov 12, 2023 the site was at h.ki, and the Dec 25, 2023 features video toured what it could do: Community moments, search, handles, Follow, favorites, sharing, "Copy as YouTube Chapters" and the import of chapters from comments. The moments George made for that tour on h.ki are dated that day in Heartbeat's own data.

12:38 The first moment on Heartbeat, George says in his Feb 2, 2025 "How to viki" video, is "George with an elephant", a deliberate echo of YouTube's first video, "Me at the zoo", which is about elephants: a founder filming elephants at a zoo in both cases, a parallel that he says "is not a coincidence".

2024: Shorts, vikis and h.ki for everything

1:38 On Jun 16, 2024 George showed two additions to the home page: "we have real time stats now", a button beside All listing what everyone had just added, and Shorts as a tag of their own. Today's home page has a Last 24 hours chip that does a similar job (Home and Sidebar).

Vikis, video wikis that mix writing with moments, reached h.ki in August 2024; Freedom! videos of Aug 23 and Aug 24, 2024 introduce them as new, and a Nov 1, 2024 video is titled "Vikis (video wikis) new on ❤️ Heartbeat".

0:00 On Oct 1, 2024 Freedom! moved "all of our domains that we've had for over 10 years" to h.ki, beginning with its forums, community.tm becoming community.h.ki, "because h.ki is heartbeat". Supertags followed on Oct 12, 2024, and on Dec 23, 2024 the h.ki/as/<handle> address that shows Heartbeat with one person's moments only.

2025 and after: tools, puzzles and pretty links

2025 brought a new feature almost every month, each announced in a Freedom! video: tools such as an emoji picker, text comparison and an IBAN checker (Jan 18), riddles (Feb 16), logic puzzles (Apr 1), a Heartbeat 3D set (Apr 6), pretty links (Apr 20), trivia (Apr 26), the Heartkeys typing game (May 31) and an EMI calculator (Jun 7). In September 2025 the heartbeat.* domains were presented as future standalone sites; by Nov 7, 2026 heartbeat.games and heartbeat.kids had become sites of their own.

Vi.ki and viki.gg

Vi.ki, the site this page is on, began close to Heartbeat. h.ki's sidebar still links to https://vi.ki/ as the "Viki prototype" (Nov 7, 2026), the YouTube description of the Dec 25, 2023 features video linked pages at vi.ki/video/ and vi.ki/blog/, and viki.gg redirects to vi.ki.

5:05 In November 2023 George pointed viewers there for a written article: "I actually wrote an entire Vicki article", reached by typing vi.ki, about Heartbeat having no video ads. Those old vi.ki blog pages are gone (they answer 410 Gone since Nov 6, 2026). Today vi.ki is a separate site of video wikis, one per subject, and Heartbeat's own vikis at h.ki/vikis carry the same idea inside Heartbeat. No public page dates when viki.gg was first used.

We think Heartbeat's history shows a steady pattern: each feature arrived first as a small tool announced in a video (a photo gallery, a key that saves a second, a tip about Shorts), and the bigger idea, a site of moments, writing and photos together, was assembled from them. The open question is whether the many 2025 side features (tools, puzzles, typing) pull attention from the moments, which are what no other site does.

Frequently asked questions

When did Heartbeat launch?

Its first product, Heartbeat Photos, launched on Aug 3, 2023, and the Heartbeat Moments extension on Aug 18, 2023.

What was Heartbeat's first website?

heartbeat.love for moments and heartbeat.photos for photos, in 2023. Both now redirect to h.ki.

When did Heartbeat move to h.ki?

By Nov 12, 2023, when a Freedom! video title names h.ki. On Oct 1, 2024 Freedom! moved its other .tm sites to h.ki too.

Who makes Heartbeat?

Freedom!, whose founder George Vanous presents Heartbeat in its videos; the extension's publisher is Freedom! Family Limited.

When did vikis come to Heartbeat?

In August 2024, when Freedom! videos introduced "the new h.ki/vikis".

What was the first moment on Heartbeat?

George Vanous with an elephant, he says in the Feb 2, 2025 "How to viki" video, chosen to echo YouTube's first video at the zoo.

Sources

• Heartbeat Photos 1.0 is here - Free for you!, Freedom!, Aug 3, 2023 (video)
• Heartbeat Moments 1.0 is here - Free for you!, Freedom!, Aug 18, 2023 (video)
• YouTube Channel ID visible again (was hidden before) after adding Heartbeat Moments Chrome extension, Freedom!, Aug 29, 2023 (video)
• No video ads! - YouTube vs Heartbeat - h.ki, Freedom!, Nov 12, 2023 (video)
• Heartbeat features - No fluff, Freedom!, Dec 25, 2023 (video)
• YouTube Playables ❤️ Play games on YouTube!, Freedom!, Jun 16, 2024 (video)
• ❤️ Heartbeat is our future!, Freedom!, Oct 1, 2024 (video)
• How to viki ❤️ Heartbeat, Freedom!, Feb 2, 2025 (video)
• Upload dates of Freedom!'s other Heartbeat videos (2024 to 2025), read from YouTube on Nov 7, 2026
• George Vanous's heartbeat, About, h.ki, read Nov 7, 2026
• Heartbeat extension on the Chrome Web Store, read Nov 7, 2026