I Trained My YouTube Algorithm, and You Should Follow Its Lead

According to Nielsen statistics , we collectively spend more time in front of YouTube than any other streaming service, including Disney+ and Netflix. That’s a lot of hours of watching, especially for an app that requires a lot of trust when it comes to its algorithmic recommendations, which can easily steer you in weird, provocative, or downright dark directions. If you want a little more control over what you see, let me share with you the steps I took to finally tame my own YouTube algorithm.

Despite how much time we spend watching YouTube, the app doesn’t behave quite like most other streamers. Instead of loading a homepage for a show or movie you want to watch, you often have to hope that if a new episode of something you like comes out, YouTube will show it to you. (As someone who’s trying to be a YouTube creator myself, I’d love to see the app offer landing pages for specific shows rather than a bunch of playlists .)

And because YouTube content is so diverse, it’s easy to get your algorithm confused. Maybe you’ve gotten into the habit of watching long-form content on YouTube, only to see it interrupted by one weird cat video — and suddenly YouTube thinks you only want to watch cat videos.

Since YouTube still hasn’t responded to my requests to create context-aware viewing profiles , I’ve had to settle for learning every trick I can to manipulate the algorithm myself.

Basics: Likes, Dislikes, Subscriptions and Bell

You can’t spend 20 minutes in the app without a YouTuber preaching about liking, sharing, and subscribing . You already know how these actions help your favorite creators, but how do they help you? Unfortunately, there’s no way to know exactly what effect your engagement is having on the algorithm (even YouTube can’t know for sure ), but there are a few helpful things to keep in mind:

• Use likes and dislikes to nudge you toward recommendations, not to express approval or disapproval. The like and dislike buttons are the most direct way to express your interest (or lack thereof) in YouTube. They’re also one of the most misunderstood tools . Don’t think of them as a way to communicate with a creator about the substance of their content. In general, it’s best to think of them as nudges toward your own personal recommendations. Likes are pretty strong indicators that you want to see more of their content, but dislikes won’t necessarily block a particular creator or topic from appearing in your feeds.

• Subscribing is good, but it’s not a guarantee. You can think of subscribing to a channel as a kind of super like for the channel as a whole. It tells YouTube that you want to see what they’re doing next (or see more from their backlog). The downside is that subscribing doesn’t guarantee that you’ll see anything. YouTube tends to favor more recent subscribers in its recommendations. If you want to see everything you’re subscribed to, you’ll actually need to look for the Subscriptions tab.

• Tapping the bell is truly the best thing you can do. Creators often like to remind you to “tap the bell,” and they do it for a reason: it will send you a push notification (assuming you ’ve allowed notifications from your YouTube app ) whenever one of your subscribers uploads a new video. Not only does this increase the likelihood that you’ll see new videos that interest you, but it also gives those creators important metrics they can use to understand their audience.

These are all very basic tools for refining your suggestions, but it’s also important to understand them in context. YouTube isn’t just looking at what you say you want, it’s looking at how you actually behave in the app. If you like a video, subscribe to a channel, and hit the notification bell, but then you don’t watch that creator’s videos anymore, YouTube will eventually stop recommending them.

This is neither good nor bad in itself, and despite some paranoia among creators, it’s not even bad for the channels themselves. The goal of the YouTube algorithm is to give you something you’re likely to spend time watching. If the videos it suggests don’t meet that goal — no matter how much you’ve asked the algorithm to show you those videos — it will move on to something else. Understanding this gives us some context for taking the next level of algorithm taming.

Intermediate Algorithm Training: Refine History and Reject Videos You Don’t Want to See

If likes, subscriptions, and the bell are all little nudges for the algorithm, are there bigger nudges you can use? I’m so glad you asked. Watch time is the most obvious one, but that’s just using YouTube. And no, there’s no big gain in trying to manipulate it. Just keep watching what you like and stop watching what you don’t, and YouTube will try to follow your patterns.

“Try” is the key word. Anyone who’s ever had a door fixed knows that YouTube can be a little overzealous about showing you hours of content about something you spent five minutes watching. One quick way to fix this is to go to your History, find the video in question, and hit “ Remove from Watch History.” Not only will it not show up in your list of previously watched videos, YouTube will also not count it as something you spent time watching when it recommends new videos.

However, this trick only works for individual videos you’ve already watched. If you’re getting recommendations based on broad topics you don’t like, you can ask not to see those recommendations before you even click on the video. Click the menu button on the video thumbnail to find options that say “Not interested” (good for indicating you don’t like that particular video suggestion) and “Don’t recommend channel,” which is the closest thing YouTube has to blocking a channel entirely.

Unfortunately, if you allow YouTube to autoplay a video from the thumbnail before you tap on the video — a feature you can, and probably should, turn off — it may count as a “watch” in your watch history. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve put my phone down and accidentally “watched” a video for a few minutes. Even if you select “not interested” before tapping on a video, if it autoplays, you may have to delete it from your history.

Advanced Algorithm Mastery: Use Playlists and Multiple Accounts to Get Recommendations

I will die on a hill for believing that YouTube should have a mode switch. I want to be able to have a profile for watching in-depth video essays on highly specialized topics and another profile for dumb cat videos. YouTube has come close to this with the introduction of category tags. In some places, like YouTube on the web or certain views in apps, you’ll see a list of tags for things like “Games” or “News” that will filter suggestions. They’re useful, but not enough, in my opinion.

I’d prefer something that allows me to train my personal recommendations across different segments directly. And over the years, I’ve developed two main strategies for achieving this: playlists and account switching.

Playlists

With the playlist approach, I save videos I like on a particular topic into a specific list. Then, if I want to see more videos on that topic, I open the playlist and look through the sidebar. This usually gives me more specific video recommendations on that topic (interspersed with the usual card recommendations), as well as more specific genre filters so I can drill down further. The only downside to this approach is that it all happens in the sidebar of another video. It’s a little better on mobile, but can feel a little hacky at times.

Switching Account

The workaround for switching accounts feels more natural while browsing, but it’s a bit more difficult to change modes. YouTube has gotten much better at switching accounts, with a simple “Switch Accounts” dropdown in most of its apps. Sure, each one requires a whole Google account, but there’s a decent chance you already have at least five of those accounts anyway.

There’s nothing special about filtering videos this way, but it gives you a few different blank slates to work with instead of one huge one. For example, I have a Gmail account that I only use as a trash bin for things I don’t want to put my real email address in. On YouTube, if I decide to tinker with the junk video recommendations, I’ll switch accounts first. That way, any junk I watch won’t affect my main account’s recommendations. (This is also useful if you want to invite guests but don’t want them poisoning your well of videos they post.) The only downside? If you use YouTube Premium to avoid ads, that won’t carry over to all your other accounts.

All of this manipulation will result in a streaming experience that’s still not as polished as what you’d get on apps like Netflix and Disney+. On those services, you can set up multiple profiles on a single account and pretend it’s your aunt watching all that junk TV when she comes to visit. Until YouTube makes this an official feature, the tricks above will hopefully help you get the best deals.

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