YouTube customers from throughout the web have reported encountering a homepage fully devoid of content material. That’s as a result of the platform has determined it can now not present video suggestions if an account’s watch historical past has been turned off “and [has] no vital prior [history]” out there.
The corporate quietly made the announcement on a support page explaining sure options like your private dwelling feed require a watch historical past to perform usually. Shifting ahead, customers who received’t permit YouTube to maintain observe will solely see a search bar on the prime of their web page plus the 4 buttons on the left-hand information menu. The platform states this replace is to supply folks a “extra streamlined [experience] for these… preferring to look moderately than browse suggestions.” It will probably additionally push customers to grow to be extra acquainted with subscribed channels or the Matters tab as they received’t be distracted by a wall of movies.
Rolling out
A YouTube Neighborhood Supervisor mentioned these modifications might be rolling out slowly, “over the subsequent few months” beginning at the moment, however as acknowledged earlier, a number of have already got the replace. Posts on X (previously often called Twitter) and Reddit present the clean dwelling pages on the YouTube mobile app in addition to on desktop. All you’ll see is a window stating your watch historical past setting is at the moment disabled.
You’ll be able to verify if the patch has reached your account by going over to your Google Account’s Exercise Controls. Scroll right down to the underside and you will see the YouTube Historical past entry the place you’ll be able to flip it off or make a number of changes. Return to your account and see if something’s completely different.
Person response
The response from customers has been combined. On one hand, you could have people who are pretty happy, even ecstatic, since their YouTube account might be quite a bit cleaner. Dwelling feeds received’t be inundated with unwelcome content material simply because they performed a random video one time. Others, however, are less keen stating this kills a “big half” of YouTube. A part of the enjoyable is having the algorithm feed you movies it’s possible you’ll like, main you to find hidden gems on the positioning. Some merely do not like the thought of getting a very empty dwelling web page or needing to reactivate their watch historical past.
Why is @YouTube forcing me to activate watch historical past?? With out watch historical past, the movies in dwelling web page should not seen. I do not like this replace! #youtube pic.twitter.com/8efIDJiFGMAugust 8, 2023
Now if solely YouTube would permit us to decide out of seeing ads, however that’s wishful considering. We’ll simply must make do with putting in an advert blocker on our browser.
Talking of which, be sure you take a look at TechRadar’s list of the best ad blockers for 2023.
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