Stop getting bad YouTube recommendations with 4 simple steps

YouTube should show you more of what you like. If it doesn’t, you can nudge it back to relevancy.

YouTube's absolutely massive wealth of videos means that relying on recommendations is the fastest way to find new content you'll like, unless you want to spend a lot of time searching. Like most other platforms, YouTube's algorithm picks up all kinds of signals from your activity to show you more that you're likely to keep watching. This is great most of the time, but the algorithm can sometimes get tripped up and display a lot you're not interested in.

If the site is showing you irrelevant suggestions in the right sidebar, at the end of videos and on the homepage, then you're likely giving it the wrong idea about what you like — or not providing enough signals at all. It might take some time to retrain, but you can teach YouTube to show more of what you enjoy and less of what you don't.

You have to give YouTube permission to keep track of your watch history so it knows what you're interested in. If you have the applicable setting turned off, YouTube may even show you a blank homepage with no suggestions.

To enable this setting, click your profile icon at the top-right of YouTube and choose Google Account . On the Google Account page , select Data & privacy from the left sidebar, then choose Personalization settings . In this menu, find YouTube History and make sure it's enabled. The Subsettings checkboxes are optional but provide more data points to use in suggestions.

From this box, check the status of Auto-delete too. Google gives you the option to automatically clear this data every three, 18 or 36 months. Doing so means less information to use for recommendations, but it also gives the algorithm a more focused data set to work with.

Once you're sure watch history is enabled, the most important way to improve your recommendations is to give the site lots of positive signals to work with. When you find a video you enjoy, watch it the whole way through and hit Like . Subscribe to creators you want to see more from and consider enabling notifications using the bell for your favorites. Leave comments to show engagement. Search for what you're interested in and click on videos that appeal to you.

Favorable input is important, but you can provide YouTube with negative feedback too. Hit Dislike on videos that are uninteresting or waste your time. When you see a recommendation you don't want to watch, click the three-dot (...) button on it and choose Not interested . If it's the entire channel you don't like, choose Don't recommend channel instead. Be sure to unsubscribe from channels you don't watch anymore. And remember that hiding YouTube Shorts is its own option .