How to hide YouTube recommendations

The homepage grid and the related-videos sidebar are the two places YouTube keeps you watching. Here is how to quiet both, three ways.

Why there is no simple switch

YouTube's recommendations are the product. There is a way to starve them of data, and there are ways to hide them in your browser, but there is no setting that simply turns them off while everything else keeps working.

1. The built-in option: pause your watch history free, limited

In YouTube's settings, under History, you can pause watch history and clear it. With no history, the homepage shows an almost empty page instead of a personalised grid.

It is a real option and costs nothing. But the related-videos sidebar next to every video still fills up, autoplay still queues the next one, and you lose the useful parts of history too, such as picking up where you left off.

2. Remove the feed and sidebar with an extension free, all or nothing

Unhook adds switches for the homepage feed, the related sidebar, end-screen suggestions, and more, and removes them from the page. uBlock Origin's element picker can hide the same blocks by hand.

It is thorough and free. The downside is the same as with any removal tool: the content is gone until you turn the extension off, and layout changes at YouTube can break it for a while.

3. Blur the grid and the sidebar, keep search and subscriptions gentler

Softspot's YouTube preset blurs the homepage video grid and the related-videos sidebar with one click each. The search bar, your subscriptions page, the video you are watching, and the comments (unless you blur those too) all stay perfectly usable.

Need one of the recommendations after all? Hover it and hold the peek button. It reveals for ten seconds and then fades back to blurred. The pause is the point: it turns autopilot into a decision.

Made with distractible brains in mind. Nothing is deleted, nothing is forbidden, it just costs a deliberate moment.

How to set it up

1Install Softspot from the Chrome Web Store. It is free on two sites, and it asks for no site access until you blur something.
2Open the site, click the Softspot icon in your toolbar, and press + Blur next to Homepage video grid and Related videos sidebar.
3Done. It stays blurred on every visit. To blur anything else on the page, press Alt+B and click it.

Which should you pick?

Built-in options if you want a lighter feed and do not mind it creeping back.

A removal extension if you never want to see it again and are fine with it being gone for good.

Softspot if you want it out of your face but still there when you genuinely need it, with the rest of the site working normally.

Questions people ask

Can I still find videos I actually want?

Yes. The search bar stays crisp and works normally, and your subscriptions page is untouched. Only the recommendation blocks are blurred.

Does blurring the sidebar stop autoplay?

No, autoplay is YouTube's own switch on the video player. Turn it off there; Softspot handles what you see, not what plays next.

Put the noise out of focus

Softspot blurs the distracting parts of any website. Free on 2 sites, no account, no tracking.

Add Softspot to Chrome One-time upgrade for unlimited sites. Yours forever, no subscription.