I am often frustrated by YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. It suggests the same videos I’m not really interested in again and again, and rarely shows me anything different from what I’ve watched before.
Very occasionally, I’ll get an option that says “Want to see something new?” with a button to click for “Something New” which gives me a whole slate of different videos to pick from.
Once I’ve done this though, I can’t get back to that page.
Does anybody know how I can force this to come up, or find the “Something New” page manually?
No, I don’t. I see “Explore” (directly below “Home” on the main page), if that’s what you’re thinking of—it seems to bring up a variety of “Trending” videos that are not personalized to me and don’t really look all that interesting to me).
Are you logged into YouTube? Have you tried searching for some of the kinds of things you’d like to see? Are you subscribed to any channels? Those are things that might help teach the recommendation algorithm what to suggest to you.
You know those bubbles at the top of Recommended that give you categories? You can actually swipe them to the left to see more categories. The one called “New to You” tends to be the furthest right.
On Desktop, I find that I have to put my mouse into the two of bubbles and then scroll down with my mouse to get the bubbles to swipe left, and the last option (which is indeed “New to you”) is cut off a bit. But it is there. And perhaps the bubble will move further left if you use it more often.
That sounds like what I see when I am not logged in. Usually not interesting.
I am
Eh, I don’t really know what I want to see. “More of the same, but different.” is how I would describe it.
Tons. But I don’t necessarily want to watch every single video those channels ever made, and once I’ve watched the ones I find interesting YouTube keeps recommending the boring ones again and again.
I think that’s it! Thank you, I had no idea that option was there.
You can click on the three dots that appear when you hover your mouse over each video thumbnail, and then click the “Not Interested” option. Whether that will actually work to get you better Recommendations, I can’t say. I’ve not had the best luck with it. But it does at least make that particular video stop showing up.
No, I don’t know why YouTube makes these useful options less discoverable. At least with the dots, that’s a normal thing to have to do. Scrolling to see all the bubbles? That’s something I never noticed until I accidentally scrolled there with my mouse. @Thudlow_Boink I only see an arrow on the left once I start scrolling. One never appears on the right, probably because things are a bit cut off.
When you do that it should prompt you with “Tell us why” and then you can choose between “I’ve already watched this video” and “I don’t like this video.” You don’t have to do that step, but it helps improve your results. Supposedly.
And if you just never want to see, say, Jacksepticeye, ever again, which I totally understand and completely agree with , you can click “Don’t recommend this channel” and you won’t.
Yeah, I do that but it seems YouTube just shows me more videos I’ve already seen then.
I actually had to resize my browser to see the “New to you” option, even after scrolling. It wouldn’t scroll all the way until I did.
I’ve spent way too much time fiddling with these options, trying to get more variety. It just hasn’t ever worked.
The “New to you” option showed me this delightful video of nerds being nerdy about a subject I would otherwise never have found:
Why would somebody make their own bicycle spokes? It’s nuts, but while I have little interest in mountain biking I love the “I’m going to do it myself because I can” ethos wonderful.
, you can click “Don’t recommend this channel” and you won’t.