You’ve opened the YouTube app only to be met with the sound of crickets. Your home feed is blank, and there are no recommendations to browse. Is it a glitch? Has your account been hacked?
The answer to both questions is no. YouTube has changed the way you experience your home feed. But what does this mean, and can you get your old feed back? Stick around to learn more about why your YouTube feed is blank and how to fix it.
Why Your YouTube Home Feed Is Suddenly Blank
There’s a reason why YouTube looks a little different upon opening the app.
Starting on August 8th, 2022, YouTube removed features that rely on watch history to recommend content if the setting is disabled. Naturally, this affects the home feed. In other words, if your home page is blank, you’ve probably disabled orpaused your YouTube watch history. You must enable it to populate your home feed again.
The platform provided the reason for this change on theYouTube Help page:
We are launching this new experience to make it more clear which YouTube features rely on watch history to provide video recommendations and make it more streamlined for those of you who prefer to search rather than browse recommendations. You can change your YouTube watch history settings at any time based on whether you prefer us to provide video recommendations or not.
At the time of writing, not everyone might be affected by this, but YouTube will roll out the changes slowly over the coming months.
Are you new to YouTube? Learn YouTube started and its first video.
How to Turn On Your YouTube Watch History
A blank home feed can be weird and may take a while to get used to. It means you’ll have to search for the content you want to see.
But sometimes, it’s easier just to browse the options presented to you, especially if they include content you’re interested in. So, if you miss having YouTube recommendations, consider enabling watch history. Here’s how to do it:
On the mobile app, tap your profile icon and go toSettings > Manage all history > Saving your YouTube history. Then, tapTurn on.
That’s it. Follow the same steps and hit theTurn offbutton in the same place if you change your mind in the future.
If you don’t want YouTube History to save all your activity, you’re able to choose what you want to be saved. Simply check the relevant box underSubsettings.
What Information Does Your YouTube History Save?
YouTube History saves the following information about your YouTube activity:
This includes your activity while offline; YouTube automatically saves that information when you connect to the internet again. However, it excludes yourYouTube comment history.
What’s the point, you may ask? Google collects this information to personalize your experiences on its services, which include YouTube. Enabling watch history allows YouTube to suggest channels you might enjoy, show you better recommendations, and pick up where you left off while watching a video. But it also extends to showing you relevant ads both on and off Google.
You can check your YouTube history to see what you’ve been up to on the platform. To do this, sign in to your Google account, go to theYouTube History page, and scroll down the page.
Take Control of Your YouTube Experience
No two users are the same; some rely on recommendations, while others may find them annoying. YouTube wants you to experience the app in a way that works best for you.
If you don’t like seeing recommendations on your home page, get used to seeing it blank. But if you want to populate the home page with recommendations, enable your YouTube watch history. If you’re not thrilled about your current watch history, consider deleting it and starting over.
