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Does your YouTube algorithm feel a bit … fixed? I know I have been there – receiving recommendations about things I try to think about less about. It is too easy to click, which in turn shows YouTube that you are interested in that subject, which means that you see more such recommendations. It is an endless Cyle.
Therefore, if you want to prevent youtube from consuming your life, you have to take control of the algorithm. We talked about how we should reset the Instagram algorithm; Here you can read how you can do the same with YouTube.
Remove everything from your YouTube history
Go to the Battle myactivity.google.com. From here you can remove everything you have done on Google products -Things you searched for, the websites you visited in Chrome, the places where you went on devices with Google Maps installed and all YouTube videos you have Viewed.
You can filter to see only your YouTube videos by clicking Youtube -History then click Manager History. From here you can manually delete all the videos that you would rather not have influenced that youTube algorithm -we have in our article about how you can find, edit and clean up your YouTube history. Everything you remove stops influencing your YouTube algorithm. There is even a search tool, which means that you can only filter videos that call certain topics. This is great if you want to be surgical about the topics that you no longer want to see: just look for something and remove the videos in which you are no longer interested.
You can also delete everythingSo completely resetting your YouTube algorithm. Click to do this on the To delete button, then click on Remove all time.
You will be asked to confirm, after which all your YouTube watch history is deleted. Go back to YouTube and you will see that there are no videos on the homepage. To find something to view, you must look for searches or go for the subscription page instead.
Your homepage will be populated again while watching videos. Note that your algorithm is still influenced by your subscriptions, your chrome history and all other information that Google still has about you.
If you prefer that your YouTube start page will remain empty, that is possible: just go back to myactivity.google.com. From here you can disable all YouTube history.
Do that and Youtube stops keeping track of which videos you have watched in the future and the start page of YouTube will remain empty as long as you are logged in to your Google account.
Freetube prevents Google from keeping you completely
Do you want to prevent Google from following you completely? Look into FreetubeA free and open source application built up around the idea of privacy. This application is available for Linux, MacOS and Windows computers. It stores your watch history on your computer, not in the cloud, which means that you can keep track of what you have viewed without allowing Google.
However, there is a potential disadvantage: Freetube does not support ads. If you want advertisements to appear several times in every video you watch, do not use Freetube. Jokes aside, there are other great functions here, of the possibility to switch off comments to completely disable the recommended videos. View our full letter from Freetube for more information.
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