YouTube recommends videos based on your watch history. The way that you use your YouTube account is carefully curated and YouTube rewards you by suggesting exactly the kind of content you want to see.
However, what do you do when you need to watch a YouTube video for work, or someone else wants to play a song? You could open a secure browser and hope that the video is still available. You could watch the video and clean your watch history later.
Or, you could pause your watch history. Here’s how to pause your YouTube watch history on mobile and desktop.
How to Pause YouTube Watch History on Mobile
YouTube lets you pause and unpause your watch history so you can watch videos without those videos impacting your recommendations. It’s a handy feature, but it can be hard to find if you don’t know where to look, particularly if you use the app.
- From the homepage on the YouTube app, select Library from the toolbar across the bottom of the screen.
- Select History.
- On the History page, select the stacked dots icon in the upper right and then select History Controls.
- Here, there’s a toggle switch to Pause watch history.
After you’re done watching work videos or your friend is done suggesting videos, use this same pathway to resume your watch history. You should be able to see that the videos that you watched in the meantime went unrecorded. If you forgot to pause your watch history, select Manage all activity to delete items from your history individually.
How to Pause YouTube Watch History on Desktop
When on the browser version of the YouTube homepage, select History from the menu on the left.
On the History page, click Pause watch history on the right side of the screen.
You can follow the same path to unpause your watch history whenever you like. You can also select Manage all history or Watch and search history directly from the same menu to delete specific items from your history.
Watch YouTube Without Ruining Your Recommendations
The algorithms that YouTube uses to suggest you videos and playlists are pretty easy to throw off. That’s why it’s so important to manage your watch history carefully. Fortunately, YouTube provides the tools to watch the occasional outlier video without throwing off your future recommendations.