YouTube Home Page Will Be Minimalist When Viewing History is Disabled
YouTube has revealed a modification to its home page for users who have disabled their watch history. As of today, individuals with their viewing history turned off and lacking any notable prior watch history will no longer see the video service’s home feed. This alteration aims to offer a more simplified browsing experience, displaying solely the search bar and guide menu.
“If you have YouTube Watch History turned off and do not have significant past watch history, features that require watch history to make video recommendations will be disabled starting today, such as the YouTube Home Feed,” the company wrote in a blog post today. “This means that starting today, your home feed can look a lot different: you’ll see a search bar and a guide menu on the left without a feed of recommended videos, so you can more easily search and browse subscribed channels and explore the Topic tabs instead.”
YouTube says the changes will roll out “slowly, over the next few months.” The company describes the change as “clarifying which YouTube features rely on watch history to provide video recommendations and make them more streamlined for those of you who prefer to search instead of scroll through recommendations.”
YouTube says that once the change comes to your account, you can change your watch history settings to change the view at any time. The change is in its own section on the My Google activity settings page.
