For whatever reason YouTube has decided to introduced a ‘For You’ tab in the videos section of the channel.
The new ‘For you’ tab in the Videos section.
Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if YouTube wasn’t automatically defaulting to this view, which makes it appear there is no new content when you are om the channel’s Videos tab. From what I gather this feature has been rolling out for the past month or so. However, it was only within the last couple days has it rolled out on to my main account (not sure about the other YouTube account I use for the laptop). The fix is fairly painelss but there is a minor side effect, which may or may not be that big of deal depending on how much you care (or in my case, don’t) about YouTube ‘Watch History’. More info about Watch History below.
Be sure you sure you are logged into your YouTube Account
1. From the main YouTube home page in the left column click on History |
2. On the right side of the history page click Pause watch history. |
| 3. You will be asked if you want to ‘Pause watch history’ and given a warning about the “side effects” associated with pausing your watch history. If you don’t mind/don’t care (or not having to click Latest every time you go into a channel’s video tab is worth it) then click Pause.
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| 4. Upon returning to the Video tab the ‘For you’ option is removed and Latest is now the default. Note: A page refresh may be needed.
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I for one really don’t care that much about my YouTube watch history and the side effects of losing the functionality are worth it compared to having to remember to click on latest. This is yet another little change that I find annoying about YouTube. One of the biggest was last year separating Videos, Shorts and Live into their own tabs instead of just being on the channel’s home page. Again one of those “oh a favorite channel has new content” clicks on channel and does not see anything new on the Home Screen, then have to click Shorts or Live to find said new content. I suppose this was there way of addressing the complaints of people who didn’t want to deal with Shorts (another feature I loathe…the format is fine, but the UI sucks) or Live Streams when they came to a channel. via r/YouTube subrredit
Perhaps in the future someone will create a Chrome extension to ‘fix’ this bloody feature. Which leads me to a Bonus Tip! For whatever illogical reason YouTube decided people didn’t need to know the actual date a video was uploaded, instead they stated displaying X months ago or X years ago. I’d rather see the actual date the video was uploaded as “2-yeara ago’ is rather wide range (could be anywhere from as far back as June 2020 or as current as May 2021). Fortunately, there is a Chrome extension for this: Show YouTube Video Upload Date
While on the subject of YouTube annoyances. Seems after their failed Experiment with 4K Videos in trying to make ‘YouTube’ Premium feature they are now experimenting with a new way to try and force users to Premium: Blocking Videos if you are using an AdBlocker. From Bleeping Computer:
YouTube ad blocker warning (Sazk100)
I get it bandwidth and storage are not cheap and YouTube is a free-service which relies on advertisements to pay the bills and the content creators. However, when you have to sit through a one or two-minute ad before you can watch a video, only to be interrupted midway through with another ad (or two, or three) it becomes annoying really quick. Not to mention these ads are additonal data being consumed which is an annoyance for people with Internet plans with data limits/caps. With that said though I am not going to pay $20 a month for YouTube Premium just to enjoy an ad-free experience. I looked through all the feature of YouTube Premium and seems most are targeted towards mobile users…which I am not. Now, I’d gladly pay $20 a year for an ‘Ad-Fee’ YouTube experience (without the other useless features that come with Premium). I really hope YouTube does not make this permeant as it will likely cause a huge user (both viewers and content creators) exodus unless they offer an inexpensive ad-free only ‘Premium’ option.
