YouTube will no longer show recommendations if you turn off your browsing history
YouTube is changing the way the service’s home page works. Now, for users who have disabled their viewing history, a blank screen will be displayed instead of a list of recommended videos.
This change is part of the “new viewing experience”. If you have disabled your YouTube watch history and “do not have a significant previous watch history,” features that require watch history to make recommendations do not work for you. In other words, without knowing your viewing preferences, the service’s algorithms don’t know what to recommend as potentially interesting videos. In such cases, the search bar and the Shorts, Subscriptions, and Library buttons will be displayed on the main screen.
Google says it is going to implement this innovation “over the next few months.” However, some users have already reported online that they have noticed changes to the YouTube home screen. A message is displayed instead of the recommended videos:
“Your viewing history is disabled. You can change your settings at any time to get the latest videos customized for you.”
Google explains that it is launching this updated interface to make it clearer to users which YouTube features rely on viewing history.
