How to reset your YouTube recommendations

YouTube has no reset button, but you can get close: clear your watch history and search history, and YouTube starts learning from scratch. Here's how, plus how to steer it from there so the same junk doesn't creep back.

Updated November 2, 2026

1. Clear your watch history

Your watch history shapes most of what YouTube recommends.

On a computer:

  1. Open YouTube and click History in the menu on the left.
  2. Click Clear all watch history, then confirm.

In the app, tap You, then History, then the three dots, and choose to clear your watch history.

To remove just a few videos instead, click the X (or the three dots, then Remove from watch history) next to each one.

2. Clear your search history

Searches shape recommendations and search results too. Go to myactivity.google.com, open YouTube History, and delete your searches, or all of it. From the same page you can turn on auto-delete, so old history keeps clearing itself.

3. Clear old “Not interested” feedback (optional)

If you told YouTube “Not interested” or “Don’t recommend channel” in the past and want a truly fresh start, delete that too: in My Activity, choose Other Google activity, then YouTube ‘Not interested’ feedback, and delete it.

Most people want to keep these, since they’re what stops channels you’ve rejected from coming back.

4. Steer it from here

  • On anything you don’t want, click the three dots and choose Not interested, or Don’t recommend channel for a whole channel.
  • Watch, like and subscribe to what you do want: YouTube learns fastest from what you watch.
  • If one bad click sends you down a rabbit hole, remove that video from your history straight away.

What a reset doesn’t fix

Clearing history only resets what YouTube learned about you. Popular and trending videos still appear, a single video can pull your feed back toward a topic, and “Not interested” works one video at a time. There’s no setting for “never show me anything about this”. For channels, see how to block a YouTube channel.

Keep whole topics out for good

Remedy is a Chrome extension that filters YouTube as you browse. Tell it, in your own words, what you never want recommended again, like “no true crime” or “nothing about the election”, and it removes those videos from your Home page, search results, the sidebar and Shorts, however many YouTube suggests.

It works on a computer, in Chrome, and on X, Reddit, Instagram and other sites too.

Add Remedy to ChromeYour first day is free, no account needed. Plans from $4.92 a month. On a computer, in Chrome.

Questions

Can you completely reset YouTube recommendations?

There’s no single reset button. Clearing your watch and search history comes closest: YouTube’s recommendations are built mostly from them, so with both cleared it starts again from what you watch next.

Does pausing watch history stop recommendations?

Pausing it stops new videos being added to your history, so they stop shaping recommendations. With history off and empty, YouTube’s Home feed may show little or nothing until you turn it back on.

How do I undo “Not interested”?

In My Activity, open Other Google activity, then YouTube ‘Not interested’ feedback, and delete it.