YouTube will show a minimalist home page if your watch history is turned off
Instead of recommendations, it will display only the search bar and left-side menu options.
YouTube announced today that it’s changing how its home page works if you have your watch history disabled. Starting today, the video service’s home feed will stop appearing for those with their viewing history turned off and “no significant prior watch history.” The change will provide a more streamlined browsing experience, showing only the search bar and guide menu.
“Starting today, if you have YouTube watch history off and have no significant prior watch history, features that require watch history to provide video recommendations will be disabled — like your YouTube home feed,” the company wrote in a blog post today. “This means that starting today, your home feed may look a lot different: you’ll be able to see the search bar and the left-hand guide menu, with no feed of recommended videos, thus allowing you to more easily search, browse subscribed channels and explore Topic tabs instead.”
YouTube says the changes will appear “slowly, over the next few months.” The company describes the move as making “it more clear which YouTube features rely on watch history to provide video recommendations and make it more streamlined for those of you who prefer to search rather than browse recommendations.”
YouTube says, once the change rolls out to your account, you can change your watch history settings to switch views at any time. The toggle is in a dedicated section on the My Google Activity settings page.
