How to Disable YouTube Recommendations?

[Pesala]

This group Gaming for You keeps showing up on my YouTube index page. I keep closing it, but it shows up again whenever I refresh the page.

Is there any way to hide this forever?

[LonM]

The Algorithm has clearly decided you will like this type of content. You should watch it. Who knows what wonderous content you might be missing out on.

If you still don't want it and wish to keep an archaic sense of individuality in what you enjoy, you could try seeing if it has a special CSS class associated with it - you could then block this in an extension like uBlockOrigin or hide it with a custom style.

I don't use YouTube intensively, but does this appear if you're logged in? You could always try browsing YouTube logged out or with cookies disabled to see if that helps.

As I recall there were a bunch of categories in the sidebar, you could try using those (boomarked?) to curate custom lists that wouldn't ever have gaming videos in them. I'm not sure if YouTube offers a neat way to do this unfortunately.

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If I might step aside to evangelise for a moment, I handle all my subscriptions through RSS feeds, and largely ignore YouTube recommendations. This, coupled with hiding the comments section makes watching YouTube videos a much more enjoyable experience.

[Pesala]

@lonm I never watch gaming videos so it has nothing to do with algorithms.

The sidebar categories are:

• YouTube Premium
• Movies and Shows
• Gaming, and
• Live

None of them can be disabled as far as I can tell.

[TbGbe]

@pesala Next to the video preview there is a "3 dot" menu (similar to edit menu on here).
If you click that and select "Not Interested", then you should get the menu option "Tell Us Why" where you can choose to ignore the channel.

Note: The "Tell Us Why" may only appear when there is more than one video preview available from that channel.

[Pesala]

@tbgbe There is no option to "Tell us why."

I can hide all of the video thumbnails in this way, but fresh ones appear on refreshing the page. It is really stubborn and hard-wired into YouTube.

Using some blocking extension is probably the only way around this. Signing out is no help either, it lists even more stuff of no interest to me, and also prevents me making comments.

[pafflick]

I do watch gaming videos and yet I was unable to find the "Gaming for You" group on my YouTube's homepage*, so I guess you just simply have to start watching them and perhaps then the group will disappear from your homepage as well...

* I have only found one video in a group called "Popular With Gamers" and it was a video from a channel that I'm actually subscribed to.

[Pesala]

@pafflick Look at the sidebar?

[pafflick]

@pesala But these are no recommendations, this is just a menu...

[Pesala]

@pafflick Live recommendations are similar to Gaming for you. They keep on reappearing after being closed.

The Recommended and Recently uploaded recommendations always appear too, but they are not a problem. They have no Close button to hide them.

[pafflick]

@pesala Does it look something like this?

[Pesala]

@pafflick Not that one. Like this:

And this:

[pafflick]

@pesala That's basically the same thing, it just has a different layout.

Surprisingly, I don't get any of these recommendations. So, maybe it is actually a solution - just start watching gaming videos. And even if that doesn't make them disappear, then at least you'll find those recommendations more relevant to you this time...

(BTW. I checked the code in the meantime and it doesn't really have anything unique to it, so hiding it with pure CSS is not going to be possible)