Get Better YouTube Recommendations: Tips & Tricks for a Personalized Feed

It can be annoying to use YouTube’s algorithm because all it takes is one incorrect click to fill your feed with videos you don’t want to watch. Particularly if suggestions don’t align with your choices, it can feel overwhelming. Good news is that you don’t have to deal with bad recommendations indefinitely.

You can take charge of your YouTube recommendations, change algorithm and begin seeing video that genuinely piques your interest by following a few easy steps. There are methods to make YouTube work for you rather than the other way around such as deleting your viewing history, selecting “Not Interested,” or optimizing your subscriptions.

How to Reset Your YouTube Recommendations: Clear History for a Fresh Start

YouTube’s recommendation algorithm suggests videos based on your search history, subscriptions, likes, dislikes and comments (such as “Not Interested” or “Don’t Recommend Channel”). Of all of them, your viewing history has the biggest impact on the appearance of your feed.

You can reset your feed by deleting your watch history if you’ve begun pursuing new interests but are still receiving suggestions that aren’t relevant.

How to Clear Your YouTube Watch History

Before deleting your history, consider saving important videos to “Watch Later” or a playlist.

1. Open YouTube in your browser.
2. Click History in the left-hand menu.
3. In the right sidebar, select Clear all watch history.

If you prefer more random recommendations, you can leave watch history off. However, without at least one video in your history, YouTube won’t generate recommendations, leaving your homepage mostly blank.

How to Fine-Tune YouTube Recommendations to Match Your Interests

Once your viewing history has been cleared, you can watch videos that match with your interests to re-create your recommendations.

Clicking on videos that don’t interest you, even out of curiosity, is not a good idea because YouTube makes content recommendations based on your viewing history. Additionally, you can delete particular films from your viewing history if necessary.

Desire to learn more into a subject without changing your suggestions? By selecting History > Pause watch history you CAN easily pause your viewing history.

Improve Your YouTube Recommendations: Like Only the Videos You Enjoy

The Like button plays a key role in shaping your YouTube recommendations. While creators often ask for likes you should be selective—only liking videos that truly interest you. This helps YouTube suggest more of the content you enjoy.

Even though YouTube no longer shows dislike counts, disliking a video still signals the algorithm to show you less similar content.

To fine-tune your recommendations you can also remove likes from videos that no longer interest you. Simply go to your Liked videos playlist (left-hand menu), click the menu icon next to a video, and select Remove from Liked videos.

Manage Your YouTube Search History for Better Recommendations

Your search history affects your YouTube recommendations, though not as much as your watch history. Like watch history, you can edit, pause, or clear it anytime.

To pause your search history:

1. Click your profile picture and select Your data in YouTube.
2. Under YouTube Watch History, find Include your searches on YouTube and uncheck it. This prevents searches from influencing your recommendations.

YouTube doesn’t have a separate option for deleting search history but you can go to Manage history to clear all YouTube activity within a specific time range or completely.

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Customize Your YouTube Recommendations with Topic Filters

At the top of your YouTube homepage, you’ll see a selection of topics based on your interests. When a topic is clicked, a carefully selected feed of relevant videos appears. These subjects are selected using your viewing history, which helps YouTube recommend videos that you’ll probably like.

These pointers can help you improve your suggestions and make a feed that really suits your tastes. But if YouTube gets too involved, think about imposing restrictions to keep things in check.