Unhook: Hide YouTube Recommendations | Hacker News Reader

Unhook: Hide YouTube Recommendations

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Related, uBlock fliters are very effective on Twitter. All of the recommendation sections are easy to select and toggle,

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%23%23%20twitter%20ublock&type... ("## twitter ublock")

https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/of5z86/cleany...

edit: And here's the YouTube version of that HN query -- there are several suggested ways to block YouTube Recommendations,

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%23%23%20youtube%20ublock&type... ("## youtube ublock")

edit2: Here's a very satisfying generalized query ("## ## ublock" -- comments with two or more ##-syntax rules),

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%23%23%20%23%23%20ublock&type=...

Also if you're using android, Youtube app can be replaced with NewPipe(FOSS) by exporting the YT subscription list to it[1].

No ads, No notification pollution & recommendations require manual action(Separate tab).

[1] https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/import-export-data/

As a bonus tip, you can simply remove the recommendation/trending tab from main view. I did, and now all I see when I open NewPipe is my subscriptions. Since I don't subscribe to many channels (highest frequency channel is twice a week) , my YT consumption is down to couple hours per week of explicitly channels that I want to watch. This view also let's me see easily if any subscription is generating more content than I'd like (quality a quantity ratio is universally constant), so it automatically limits oversubscription too.

I use Windows/MacOS mainly for watch Youtube and I use FreeTube(https://freetubeapp.io) to replace YT website.

However if you want to use it please avoid 0.14.0 since the upgrade to electron 14 was done poorly :S.

Use 0.13.x instead (latest 0.13: https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube/releases/tag/v0.13.2...)

0.15.0 should be released in a week or two (I become part of dev team since I want a "create new window button")

Or you can use nightly build @ https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube/actions/workflows/bu... (mostly stable just imperfect)

The electron upgrade is reverted and would be redone after 0.15.0 released. (https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube/pull/1763 / https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube/pull/1764)

If you use iOS, Musi [0] can replace the YouTube app for viewing with no ads, recommendations, etc.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/musi-simple-music-streaming/id...

So this is a third party youtube app? Sort of YouTube-do meets VLC? And it’s Allowed by the App Store?

The description doesn’t say this, and doesn’t mention how it’s funded (you say there are no ads)

Not sure why one needs to give so much information to this app while you can view YouTube using brave and hope for fewer data leaks.

> no ads

Well, in your link it says:

> In-App Purchases

> 1. Remove Ads $5.99

Honestly, that's where I get some of the most use out of YouTube, the recommended videos main page. Sometimes I'm annoyed they aren't showing me enough variation based on my subscriptions and past likes. I'm not sure why I'd want this.

Sometimes I'm watching a technical presentation/talk by someone and I'll get other talks of theirs on the recommended videos for that video page, which is useful, or followup videos on a topic.

What reasons for people that find this useful have to not wanting recommendations, either as a space to go to specifically to find something to watch or the section on the video page?

I suppose people that only want to watch the video they specifically came for, and don't want to be tempted by other media that they know they'll waste their time on.

YouTube does great at recommending videos. I love it, personally. But I can totally respect the former position as well.

If you just a single time watch a video out of your normal categories, yt will never forget. No matter how many times you click not interested.

Also, some of the horrific clickbait thumbnails and titles it suggests annoys me. So avoiding those is one less thing to care about.

Also, much of the problems with yt isn't how they allow dangerous videos to be on their platform, but how they surface them to lots of people by recommending them. They do little harm unwatched.

You can remove an individual video from your watch history by going to library -> watch history.

I don't know how you're getting relevant recommendations; YouTube seems determined to get me into watching the latest celebrity personalities, or endless streams of clickbait.

I use a few custom uBlock Origin rules to hide the recommendations sidebar and the end-of-video overlay complete. If a video doesn't show up in my list of curated subscriptions, I just don't see it, and that's fine. It's good for my feed to be slow and update infrequently; I've got other stuff to do.

I make a concerted effort to upvote stuff I like, so maybe that helps. When I was watching videos from /r/videos (which I haven't done in a while) I would actually make sure to click through to YouTube to give an upvote on things I thought deserved it (it always seemed kinda sad to me that some someone else might post a video to reddit and get a bunch of karma but while the creator might get a lot of views, most of those viewers wouldn't even be presented an upvote option for stuff they enjoyed).

In addition to that, while my subscriptions does have some crap in it, it's also got quite a few math and science educators, as well as people doing visual essays. I'm also a sucker for educational crossed with pop-culture, so stuff from LegalEagle usually gets a watch and a like (and I'm subscribed) as well.

I agree is does seem to weight recommendations to much on what was recently watched sometimes, but I imagine that's so people that are in the rabbit hole can go deeper if they want. Unfortunately, it makes it hard to find something interesting for me on occasion when the last stuff I was watching is not what I'm in the mood for at all.

I treat YouTube like I do any other media source, like Netflix. I go to it and look for stuff to watch when that's what I actually want to do, so I don't generally mind watching a few things in a row. Often I'm doing it on my TV.

My method: I subscribe and upvote generously, only downvote when it feels good, and do "not interested" in the sidebar recommends, with prejudice ("I don't like the video") if necessary. But the real trick is, on the yt home page, if any video that even looks like content I don't like comes up, I choose the option "don't recommend any more videos from this channel" immediately.

Only in this way have I managed to completely expunge all mention of J**dan P**erson from my yt recommends.

Completely!

This sounds like the Google News problem - there are more trash blogspam news pages found by Google daily than you can possibly ignore. I've stopped using it entirely because of this but just today it's showing stuff from "Cool Material", "Reality Tea" and "BreatheHeavy.com" (not to forget "Minimalist Baker").

I'm with the other two replies. My recommendations match my interests quite well. Probably due to what videos I like and others that I hide because they're not relevant to me. I don't think I'd be using YT if it weren't for the video suggestions.

Any time you see a related or recommended video that annoys you, you should click the three dots and choose "not interested"

The problem is actually how good those recommendations are. They're designed to keep your eyes glued to the site as long as possible. It's a personal choice, but removing recommendations is one of the best things for your mental health if you're going to use YT or any social media.

That said, I also find them useful. But some people believe that it's better to seek out information for yourself even if being spoonfed is easier.

> But some people believe that it's better to seek out information for yourself even if being spoonfed is easier.

I mean, when I'm looking for something specific on YouTube from my desk, I agree. When I'm in bed watching it on my TV, not so much.

If I feel a need to watch a video, especially "watch it before you lose where you found it!" panicky feeling, I push the "Watch Later" button, and just treat that Watch Later queue as an infinitely long list of "meh, eventually I might watch it" videos.

If Youtube ever gets rid of that Watch Later button I guess I'll have to push stuff I'm interested in into a list of bookmarks or a log file or something.

I do the same, but it irks me that when a video is removed or set to private, YouTube also removes the Watch Later list entry or leaves the entry but no longer shows the title or any other metadata.

Thats part of what I used https://www.recovermy.video/ for. But sadly: https://www.recovermy.video/shutdown

>The problem is actually how good those recommendations are.

I keep reading this or equivalent opinions and am consequently annoyed and confused. On at least 50% occasions, the recommendations are either designed for the most capricious of olympic ADHD champions, or appear ingeniously tailored with zealous desire to insult my intelligence. And frequently when I'm scrolling through, eg layman-level physics lectures, I'll get Don't Talk to the Police, or Lizards of the deep state, or some circumstantially irrelevant garbage. This happens after removing cache, changing advertising ID, and other regular practices. However, it truly seems subject dependent; when researching fermentation, the suggested content tends to remain on subject, minus the inevitable guy ferments whale and tiger vs crocodile vs anaconda, uhh.. sauerkraut! 50TrillionViews stragglers. Somewhere along the way, I watched or clicked on something that must have biometrically branded me as a vagarious, insatiable idiot that despite searching very specifically for Cross Pollinating Chili Plants, really wanted to watch CGI snakes fight polar bears. They won't forgive me.

Definitely designed to keep one's eyes glued, but my reaction considers gluing them shut and hating myself for expressing fascination in so many things that I want nothing to do with.

Edit: I want to add a broiling chafe of mine. On rare occasion, I will view a video of an unfortunate event, something specific, bothersome. Every time, I see the Up Next video lubriciously lurking below, smart enough to detect tragedy, but sloppy enough to assume I'm watching what I'm watching for entertainment purpose and intend to merrily traipse on to the next disaster, or whatever. If I couldn't disable autoplay, I'd smash my device.

> What reasons for people that find this useful have to not wanting recommendations, either as a space to go to specifically to find something to watch or the section on the video page?

Recommendations that "the algorithm" provide to me are rarely good, but they are always distracting, and often click-baity. Instead, I come to YouTube to watch the channels I know I enjoy. The shortcut on my New Tab page directs me straight to my Subscriptions page, and that's where I stay.

Do I ever discover new channels? Sure! When a friend shares a video with me, or I stumble across a link on HN. :)

I believe the recommended videos are now the most monetized and yield the highest profits. Things I watch almost never have ads but whenever I accidentally tap a recommended video it's usually 2 ads + interstitials + ads at the end.

And it's fine, they need to make money, I just think they're optimizing for profit and not attention these days.

I know this is not mainstream view. Go and check anecdotally right now. It's worth running some experiments and seeing if the claim had veracity.

It's currently unsubstantiated but I believe it's verifiable since >0 ads monetize better than 0 ads.

It could easily be the other way around, too. Popular videos get recommended, popular videos get interest from advertisers.

Just as the name suggests, the recommendations try to 'hook' you, and some people may prefer to purposefully navigate to videos rather than feel they're being swayed by a recommendation algorithm tuned to surface videos that might catch your eye and keep you watching, maybe for longer than you intended to.

There is another alternative which I use. Distraction Free (DF) Youtube. Works pretty well.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-distractio...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/

There is another ad-on for youtube which I recently started using. It skips all the advertisement inside the video ( such as self promotion, product promotions, into/outro, sponsorships).

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-y...

SponsorBlock is also available for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/

I've tried Unhook and DF YouTube, but I replaced them both with Undistracted [0]. It's more versatile - it has better configuration, supports more sites (Reddit, Facebook, etc) and allows an arbitrary block list.

The internet would be a better place with the ability to hide recommended feeds [1]. They can be useful sometimes, but mostly they're used to distract you from your goal. It's the digital equivalent of placing milk in the back of the grocery store. The ideal home page of a service to me is an empty page with a search bar.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/undistracted-hide-...

[1] https://suketk.com/feeds-considered-harmful

my personal solution is to block all images on youtube. I am perfectly happy browsing for information on text-only hackernews so I decided that it should be enough for video search too.

or better yet - https://github.com/trizen/pipe-viewer

I honestly just wish the recommendations were better.

I watched an interview that Curtis Yarvin gave on Tucker Carlson (about an hour long...interesting at least).

Now youtube is sending me all these conservative "talk show" people that I have absolutely 0 interest in.

Same thing: I think I watched some video about guns a while ago. I think guns are neat, but I absolutely do not care about watching dozens of videos of bros broing down in the woods with the machine guns.

I was looking to buy a leather belt about 6 months ago. I found the belt and bought it (am very happy, thank you). Now it appears for the rest of my life I will be getting leather belt advertisements. On Facebook, Youtube, Google, everywhere. The whole reason why I wanted a quality belt was so that it would last me the rest of my life if cared for properly. I intend to never buy another.

And what's worse is that it's the same set of ads. Like before I cancelled Hulu, they would show the exact same ad over and over again, just to make it as irritating as possible.

I didn't buy any belts recently and half the ads I see on YouTube are still for belts. I think "internet belt company" is just a thing right now.

EDIT: Not leather belts though, nylon with magnetic buckles or something

For what its worth, this is more because none of those advertisers (except maybe the one whose belt you actually bought) know you actually finished and bought a belt!

Everyone who wants people to buy their leather belts advertises to people who have searched or previously looked for "leather belts" and that is you...

In a perverse way, it's actually good for you to keep getting belt ads. If you just stopped getting them all of a sudden I'd get worried because it means the purchase data of belts was sold and combined with your past search data to server you new ads in an even more devious way.

Yes, I know the cause, but I'm pointing out a flaw in their plan.

It would be smarter to look for pools of products and be less targetted. E.g. to know that people who buy long lived leather belts may also be interested in long-lived leather wallets, or long-lived shirts, or glass containers instead of plastic, etc, and then rotate all these products in, rather than this targetted barrage of non-stop belt ads for the next year. This just can't be the optimal advertising strategy, there must be diminishing returns to this level of specificity.

For what its worth, companies probably DO look into this, but people who are bidding on the "leather belt" keyword are outpaying those companies in adjacent products.

At the end of the day, advertising space is auction based and if the belt companies want to bid the highest for that space, they win.

That would be a really interesting example of market failure, as it suggests if the leather-belt companies pay less, they would get more business.

Alternatively, the Faustian bargin we made with the FAANGs was that we would provide our data and they would give us useful ads.

If I bought a nice leather belt, perhaps I should get ads for nicer leather shoes or some other item, maybe a leather polish/waterproofing kit to keep my belt nice and new. The failure of the Advertising-Industrial complex in that regard has been disappointing to say the least.

To do that you have to give up more information about what you actually bought which IMO is an even bigger privacy issue than what we're currently giving away.

I think it's reasonable for the ad industry to assume that you bought the belt once you abruptly stopped showing interest in comparing belts for a couple of days. No access to purchase history needed.

I'm not sure if they get that kind of historical data of your interests when they're bidding on ads though either.

the incognito mode in chrome and inprivate in edge have become my "normal" browsing mode. i keep a regular window for a handful of web sites & apps like gmail, youtube, github, etc.

i instinctively open everything else in incognito now. i have noticed less tracking, less ads, and a more pleasant browsing experience.

The cookie banners are nagging though

Sort of off topic, but which belt did you buy? The idea that the belt will last the rest of my life appeals to me.

If you like the idea of buying things for life, check out https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/

That subreddit has mostly turned into people showing off their grandma's frying pan or grandpa's old Thermos. At least, it was the last time I read it and decided it was no longer worth reading because actual product recommendations were few and far between.

I have a heavy leather belt with a brass navy buckle that I bought in the Harvard Square leather shop 60 years ago. I’ve pretty much worn it every day of my life.

Every decade or so it needs a new strap. For a while, I was able to have one made by a young man at a leather shop in Camden ME - the old shop having disappeared from Harvard Square with the 70s.

Finally, the now old man in Camden retired and passed the business on to his son. The son doesn’t know how to work leather - he just brings in finished goods from offshore.

The current method is to find a belt in Camden that is sufficiently heavy and has a removable buckle. Throw away the trashy buckle and snap in my old one.

I’ve probably got one more strap in me.

You might find a suitable buckle at an Army-Navy store. If there still is such a place.

Just wanted to say, thanks for the tips. A cursory search seems to show that there are a few Army-Navy type stores nearby, so I might be searching for a buckle there.

You have at least two straps in you! I believe in you :)

Take care.

There should be more of a market for durable clothes. Or a cultural movement. It needs a hip name or something to latch on to like "durabalism" to go along with a hipster's sense of minimalism or nostalgia.

Good denim can last years and degrades stylishly.

It's really too bad that there's a $825 Billion apparel industry that thrives on fads and replaceable goods.

the reddit group for this about items in general and it is called, buy it for life. not exactly a market but just a subreddit for stuff that lasts longer.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/

It's a great community and idea. I wish by some miracle it became mainstream.

On the topic of YouTube tunnels ... tool/appliance restoration videos are pretty cool. There's a ton of them too.

Another problem is that quality items generally spread by word of mouth, and don't need to advertise as much. So, as an example, I am interested in camping and hiking gear, but the best brands aren't as desperate to advertise, so I get endless ads instead for cheap gadgets or unproven inventions that might work once and then fall apart. Recently spent $600 on two camera bags that I hadn't seen advertised but knew the brand, but had seen ads for many cheap $50 bags instead.

It surprises me how many people aren't being proactive about their recommendations.

Hover your mouse over a recommendation you don't like, click the three dots that appear to the right of the title, click "Not interested". Results change very quickly.

When you aren't on youtube much it can be exasperating to manage this in this way. For example, I was watching a biology lecture on youtube. Recommendation tends to be insane conspiracy theories that include some words from the biology lecture title, and zero other high quality biology lectures. I'm not going to sit there and hover my mouse over literally every recommendation when they are all insane. I will just continue to not use youtube much, so far I haven't felt like I've been missing out.

Hover over the recommended video and you can click the three dot tab to select "not interested in Curtis Yarvin" or "not interested in Tucker Carlson." I do this all the time and it makes the feed so much better.

You have to be logged in to do that no?

Not like Google doesn't know exactly who I am anyway but I prefer not staying logged in.

The odd time if there is a "weird" video I see somewhere like reddit I'll just watch it in private browsing to avoid this. It's annoying that I have to do this though.

I find I have the same issue on Spotify as well. I don't listen to Spotify a whole lot, but when I go to the gym I'll use it and listen workout style music. For me the stuff that gives me that energy and focus is often hip-hop/rap style music. But ironically it's probably my least favourite genre to listen to outside of the gym. But since at least half my time listening on Spotify is listening to that kind of music all my recommendations are terrible.

I really wish these services gave better options to manage your interests. I would love to just tell Spotify to just ignore certain genres from recommendations. Part of the problem is that I also suck at discovering music. So it would actually be beneficial to me to have better suggestions on what to listen to.

> I honestly just wish the recommendations were better.

Which is sad considering how great youtube recommendations used to be around the time Stripe was launched. Remember when people used to go down the youtube rabbit hole to see where they'd end up? Now there is no breadth nor depth to the recommendations. Youtube used to be a vast ocean, now it's a puddle ankle deep and no more than a step wide.

Like the rest of the Web, there's still a lot there—Google just won't help you find it.

I really like the new containers feature in firefox for this- I have a trash container so my main youtube container doesn't get polluted.

You have to work on them a little bit but once you do, the recommendations are incredibly high quality.

Just make sure to hide the stuff you don’t want to see on your homepage. I go as far as removing dumb videos from my watch history (or watching them in incognito in the first place).

I find that most people who complain about the YouTube algorithm expect it to just work out of the box with zero tuning. It’s not that good and to be honest I personally don’t want it to be that good. But if you put in a LITTLE effort I promise you it’s an absolute recommendation beast. I have hundreds of hours of content in my watch later list just because of it. It’s all super high quality and I’m rarely disappointed hitting random videos in my homepage.

This.

My youtube recommendations are incredible. I've spent a lot of time liking and subscribing to things that interest me, and now my feed is full of videos about history and trains and machining and woodworking and science and all kinds of stuff that I could watch for days.

I tried something similar and the results are a mixed bag at best. When the algorithm decides to recommend a video from a creator that I don't follow, it is usually something worth my time. However I cannot seem to stop getting recommendations for videos I have already watched despite diligently clicking the "not interested because already watched" boxes.

A lesser issue is that if I don't watch the videos from a certain channel or genre for a while, the algorithm decides that I must have lost interest and stops recommending those content altogether when that's not really the case. And the "related videos" on the side bar never goes beyond a list of videos from the same channel.

I get that issue as well, i think YouTube has a high emphasis on rewatching stuff which is not usually something i do there.. but it's easy to ignore and the rest of the recs are stellar so I'm not sure it's a problem. Plus the videos it recommends rewatching are still excellent and sometimes i even do rewatch them.

Yes. In particular, the single most important thing to do is to click the three dots next to a video and then click "Not interested": https://i.imgur.com/1CQzOy6.png

Literally any time you see a video you don't like, do this. It only takes one or two "Not interested"'s to dramatically improve your feed.

That’s exactly I was thinking. Why do people on HN keep hating YouTube recommendations. I want to learn electronics and now YouTube is recommending some amazing stuff. I’m absolutely amazed by the quality of content it recommends. Then again my echo chamber is mostly gaining new skills. I avoid watching trash on YouTube.

This is super helpful but also very interesting. When technology fails to adapt to people and meet their needs, people must adapt to technology and meet its needs.

I think the level of expectation is just far too high. It's an ML algorithm, feed it some high quality training data and it'll give you some good results. Out of the box it'll give you some very default generic crap.

You pretty much have to coach it with a generous amount of "Not Interested", "Don't Recommend Channel", etc. clicks on video recommendations of the sort you don't want.

Just do what I do: open the video, downvote it, then go back to the recommendations, hit the three dot menu, and click "do not show me this channel anymore", and if your sections have a three dot menu, "do not show me this section" for all the rightwing whackjob nutter categories.

Youtube eventually learned to stop showing it to me, and due to my downvotes, may be now restricting showing them to anyone.

Why not just publish as an adblock filter list? You really only need cosmetic filtering to do this (supported by adblock filters), and I don't want to worry about yet another extension going rogue and selling to some a shady company.

Does anyone have a ublock origin filter they use to block YouTube recommendations and/or comments?

This is what I use:

  youtube.com##.ytp-suggestions
  youtube.com##.ytp-pause-overlay
  youtube.com##.videowall-endscreen
  youtube.com###related
  youtube.com##ytd-comments

Hmm, it's okay, but just leaves some blank space on the right.

I tried to fix it, adding these to yours seems to work okay:

    youtube.com###related:upward(#secondary)
    youtube.com##:root:not(:fullscreen) video:matches-css(left: 0px):style(object-fit: fill!important; width: 100%!important; height: auto!important;)

Or if you use firefox, hide things with CSS in your profile's `userContent.css`

I've been using this for years to hide everything that's not video:

  ytd-app #guide,
  ytd-app #page-manager ytd-browse,
  ytd-app #secondary,
  ytd-app #comments {
    display: none !important;
  }

  #hnmain .subtext {
    visibility: hidden !important;
  }

Source: https://www.phpied.com/defining-user-styles/

Forgot to mention `#hnmain .subtext` is for hiding HN comments.

Better: don't use youtube. Or, if you need, use a better interface like ytdl, newpipe or minitube.

YouTube has some people I want to follow. They make good educational videos. Can't replace it.

Downloading everything is a PITA.

I've been using this for about 8-9 months now.

I highly, highly recommend it.

I've found YouTube much easier to consume as a result of this. It's not an endless binge anymore driven by an infinity feed.

That being said I use YouTube everyday and I'm an active content creator on the platform my self. I even have Premium.

At least for music, you get much, much better recommendations when viewing in incognito mode. Basically you get songs that other people who listens to this song also listened to, instead of the same songs youtube thinks you like, regardless of the song playing.

I've started using YouTube while logged out in Brave. Every week or two I'll clear my cache / cookies / service worker / literally all of YouTube's local storage to be truly anonymous again.

The recommendations I get (next to a playing video) immediately after doing that are fantastic. It's like a time machine that takes you back to when their recommendations algorithm focused on recommending videos that are highly relevant to what you're currently watching.

When I hit an age gate and have to use it logged in, through firefox, the quality hit for the recommendations is immediately noticeable.

I was surprised that the difference is so apparent, and I've been spending more time on YouTube again as a result.

As others have mentioned there can be some real gems in Youtube recommendations.

Unfortunately there's always (in my experience) at least one out of place recommendation, usually for something that's entirely unrelated but trending amongst the overall userbase.

If it were possible to remove just those random lures along with all live broadcasts the recommendations would likely be uniformly high quality.

Anyway, congrats on the extension. This seems especially helpful on mobile where Youtube seems to want to draw you away form the video you actually came to watch.

I watch videos I'd like to get recommended while logged-in. I watch videos I'm not sure about in incognito/private browsing not to influence the recommendations in my account. If I find myself consuming that kind of content more often and would like it to be recommended to me, I promote it to the logged-in session. If I want to see less of it, I gradually demote it, including deleting YouTube history of videos of a certain type, and this acts as an indicator that I'm consuming more than I should.

This might not be the place to ask this, but does anyone know of anything like this for the youtube app? On appleTV and on Droid the youtube app is severely struggling. From the inability to say not interested in a video or don't show this channel, to being unable to refresh the home page without closing the app completely or signing out of an account. There's no community engagement in the app from what I can see.

I feel like there is something I am missing in some settings somewhere, but I just don't know.

It’s called NewPipe

I looked at NewPipe and its not what I am looking for. I think what I am looking for is settings in youtube that will reflect the way the youtube app behaves on appletv, if they exist at all.

Somewhat related: I wrote my own chrome extension that hides the initial page contents of YouTube other than sidebar/search because I found I would go to look something up like a song and a tile would distract me. So yeah now if I want to actually see the YouTube content on first page, have to click in that area. It's interesting they seem to have a DOM-modified check running.

Interesting that feature is part of this nice.

I don't mind recommendations, YouTube does a pretty good job recommending things I would like. I just hate when I accidentally go to the trending tab. :shudder:

Wow, I was just thinking a few days ago if there's a way to hide the recommendations, which most of the time is distractive and unproductive.

I made one of these, that works for YouTube, Twitter, Tumbler, Reddit, Hacker News, Google Search, and Pinterest

You can enable/disable whatever you want. The point is to get rid of lame content.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sober-media/hfjclo...

I never feel confortable showing or sharing "my" Youtube main page/recommendations with anyone. It's providing details on my personal interests that I don't necessarily want everyone to know about. This especially true in a work context, when the content of my screen is projected/shared with an audience (boy those endscreen video suggestions can be embarrassing).

I've been using adblock to block comments and recommendations for quite a while. Now when I see them, I find them quite aggravating.

Freetube[0] is my recommendation if you're looking for this. It has the feature built-in, alongside a whole suite of distraction-minimizing features. It might not be the definitive YouTube client yet, but it definitely gets enough right to become my daily carry.

[0] https://freetubeapp.io/

Tried it, works flawlessly.

Another recommended Youtube extension is : De-Mainstream YouTube [0]

[0] : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/de-mainstream-yout...

For me recommendations is the best youtube feature. I love it, for me it is super high quality. And I can always tell it if I don't like something. Most of the content I watch came from recommend videos in the main page or a video page.

Is there an app that does this? I put for a YouTube subscription and I don’t want to see the recommendations. I just want to watch the videos on the topics I am searching.

The recommendations are there to distract you and I always regret clicking on them.

I have configured NewPipe to show my subscriptions (disables the 'trending' tab):

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.schabi.newpipe

I've been using this myself for a month and it definitely cut down on the time I spent on Youtube.

You have fine grain control over what gets hidden, including comments, suggested videos, the frontpage, playlist, infocards and so on.

Recently I've seen an increase in recommended videos which already have a red line across the bottom of the thumbnail, to denote that I've already watched it.

YouTube recommendations has helped me find a ton of good music over the years. No better platform for music imo and that includes dedicated services such as spotify

I use it for 3 months and never wanted to turn it off. I only use subscriptions and direct links and rarely trending. It's easier than I thought before.

I use this over year. My time consumtion on YT was reduced drastically since then. Also must have if you want play on YT something for kids.

Bit too coarse. I dislike that Recommendations list videos that I have seen, but otherwise it's a useful discovery tool.

I also recommend chrome extension "Youtube Subscriptions Homescreen" which defaults to your subscriptions page

Why can’t YT recommend the “next” video, or at least place the current author’s latest/most relevant video

This is great anti-dote to 'addictive design' practices that these companies use.

If you are going to disable so many features you may as well just rip the video

Hiding distractions? Sure. But I personally find YouTube recommendations quite good - if you don't ruin it by accidentally watching a single meme.

It's not perfect, but what would be a good alternative for finding new channels that you would like? Do y'all have any suggestions?

> YouTube recommendations quite good

I feel it suffers from "rich is getting richer" phenomena. Once the video start trending, the recommender starts showing it for any search.

Additionally, most things that trend in that way are going to be lowest common denominator crap, or if it's from one of the better channels, broadly accessible stuff that would be a better use of the listener's time as a listicle instead of a 15 minute video.

I wish the recommendations went for the deep cuts instead of the pablum.

Is there a way to hide a channel from YouTube search? I want that.

I don't even have a bookmark to the youtube homepage. It's to my empty videos section. So as not to get shown the dumbest clickbait of content I don't need to see.

i would like to see groupings.

If i could group my channels and my watching pattern, it may alleviate my trepidation about confused algorithms.

you can use cssbot for stuff like this too. ive always done that instead

tell more..

Youtube recommendations are fine. People lack self control. It's just a tool.

I just use hooktube.com

I just reset profile in youtube settings periodically, their recommendations are way too sticky, like literally the same videos are shown for months even if I watched them already.

I wonder what all the highly paid "ML/AI engineers" are doing.

> I wonder what all the highly paid "ML/AI engineers" are doing.

Probably finding ways to automatically take down videos

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