YouTube: turn off video recommendations - does that work?

A number of videos appear on the YouTube homepage as recommendations. We'll show you how to turn it off if the suggestions are irrelevant to you.

Switch off YouTube recommendations via user account

Since YouTube’s video recommendations match your history, you should turn them off. However, this is only possible if you have a user account. Do the following:

• First log in to YouTube with your username and password.
• On the left in the menu sidebar you will also find the playback history under your subscriptions.
• If you have selected "History", you can now remove individual videos from their history by clicking the checkbox, delete the entire history, or pause or deactivate them entirely.

Delete recommendations without a YouTtube account

If you don't have a YouTube account, disabling the recommendations will be more complicated. Here are three ways:

• If you regularly delete the cache and cookies in the menu of your browser, you can prevent YouTube (and other sites) from watching your preferences and making recommendations based on them.
• If you use the Firefox browser, you can display the history with [CTRL] + [H]. Then enter "youtube.com" in the search box. Now all YouTube pages are displayed - right-click on one of them and then on "Forget the entire website".
• Another option would be "private surfing". Almost every browser is now equipped with a private mode that enables you to surf the Internet without leaving any noticeable traces. So YouTube can not write down your interests.

In another article, you can take a look at the 5 most popular German YouTube channels.