Have you ever felt overwhelmed or even disturbed by the video recommendations on your YouTube homepage? As an open platform with over 2 billion monthly users, YouTube offers a little bit of everything – including content you may consider offensive, misleading or inappropriate.
The good news is you have options to customize your YouTube feed by blocking entire channels. This prevents videos from those channels appearing across your account.
In this detailed guide, you‘ll learn:
- Key reasons to make channel blocking a priority
- A step-by-step walkthrough for blocking channels on desktop and mobile
- Pro tips for unblocking channels, managing watch history and more
- How YouTube Kids can protect children‘s viewing
Let‘s start by understanding why gaining more control over your YouTube recommendations matters.
Why Should You Make Blocking Channels a Priority?
We all use YouTube differently – for news, entertainment, learning and more. YouTube‘s algorithm does its best to serve relevant suggestions based on your viewing history and other inferred interests. However, mistakes happen and inappropriate content can slip through.
Some reasons you may want to block certain channels include:
Age-Inappropriate Content – Sex, violence, profanity and other mature themes accessible to children
Misinformation and Extremism – Conspiracy theories, fake news and offensive viewpoints
Clickbait and Spam – channels aimed more at ad revenue than quality content
Unwanted Generalizations – content that makes assumptions about your interests
Without proactively blocking channels, your YouTube homepage can inadvertently become a dumping ground of random videos rather than a tailored resource aligned with your needs.
Beyond inappropriate content risks, blocking channels also helps the YouTube algorithm better understand your preferences so future recommendations can improve.
Step-By-Step Guide to Blocking YouTube Channels
Blocking a channel prevents any videos from appearing across your entire YouTube account – including on your homepage, recommendations and search results.
Let‘s walk through the quick process.
Blocking on Desktop
- Visit the YouTube.com homepage while logged into your account
- Scroll through video recommendations and hover over any video you wish to block
- Click the 3-dot icon that appears to open a menu:
- Select Don‘t recommend channel to confirm blocking that channel
You can repeat steps 2-4 to continuously block additional channels going forward. There is no limit set by YouTube.
Blocking in Mobile App
The process works the same way in the YouTube mobile app for iPhone or Android:
- Launch the YouTube app and tap the homepage icon
- Scroll down through video recommendations
- Tap the 3-dot icon next to any video thumbnail
- Select Don‘t recommend channel in the menu
Easy enough! The channel will now be blocked across all your devices.
Unblocking Channels
Mistakes happen. If you accidentally block the wrong YouTube channel, simply tap the Undo option immediately after blocking:
If too much time has passed since blocking, you will need to:
- Visit your Google Account‘s My Activity page
- Click Other Google activity on the left menu
- Locate YouTube ‘Not interested‘ feedback and click Delete
This will remove all blocked YouTube channels at once across your account. You can then re-block individual channels again as desired.
Beyond Blocking: Customizing Your YouTube Feed
Blocking channels is a great place to start taking control. But a few other recommendations for improving your YouTube experience include:
Prune Watch History – Remove stray one-off videos from your history that trigger irrelevant suggestions through YouTube History Settings.
Create Playlists – Curate playlists around topics you want to see more of like Comedy or Science.
Select Topics – Toggle interest topics on/off right from the YouTube homepage.
| YouTube Activity | Lifetime Views |
|---|---|
| Learned about topic | 5,220 |
| Laughed at video | 3,812 |
| Felt informed | 2,033 |
Use YouTube Kids For Children – Setup a supervised account to limit access to age-appropriate content.
The more signals you can give YouTube through your activity about your interests, the better the recommendations will become over time.
Take Action to Customize Your YouTube Experience
As you‘ve seen, blocking YouTube channels is straightforward once you know the steps. While YouTube works to serve relevant, enjoyable content, only you truly know your interests, sensitivities and family viewing preferences.
So be proactive in shaping the YouTube that‘s right for you by applying these blocking techniques and feed customization tips. The time investment is minor compared to the control and peace of mind you‘ll gain.
Now enjoy YouTube your way! If you have any other questions on features covered here, let me know in the comments below.
