Comment by aaaashley

4 months ago

Speaking of using custom CSS with YouTube, I do the following for my experience:

- Completely hide the recommended tab

- Make every thumbnail grayscale (to mitigate eye-catching thumbnails)

- Make every video title lowercase (to mitigate eye-catching titles)

Here's my code, although I have to update it every once and a while when YouTube changes:

  yt-thumbnail-view-model { filter: grayscale(); }
  h3[title] { text-transform: lowercase; }
  .ytd-watch-flexy #secondary { display: none !important; }

It's amazing how much a couple small changes can make on your browsing experience. The companies that own these products have a huge incentive to make every element purposefully addictive. I've also patched the iOS Instagram app to remove all Reels (using FLEXtool & Sideloadly), so I can keep up with my friends without falling into the traps. As developers, we have the ability to target these manipulative tactics and remove them, and I encourage you to do this as much as possible.

5 comments

aaaashley

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sogen  4 months ago

If you disable History, it automatically removes Recommendations across your devices.

  • the_af  4 months ago

    What do you get instead of recommendations? Random junk or just nothing?

    I find YouTube recommendations very useful. I only get what I'm interested in or adjacent topics, no junk, no ragebait.

  • nunodonato  4 months ago

    The issue for me is that I really want History (sometimes I need to go back to a video I know I watched 3 weeks ago). It's bs that they need history disabled to also disable recommendations.

amilios  4 months ago

Can you explain how you patched the iOS IG app? Seems massively useful if it's not too much of a pain. Please share!