YouTube is the largest video-sharing platform and social media on the internet. Most times the YouTube recommendations broken. YouTube is mostly good at recommendations but at times it gets out of hand. You are reading this post because your YouTube has turned to something else, these include not showing videos you are interested in, showing you unrelated videos, or both.

This occurred to me once when my sister use my phone to watch some hair braiding tutorials on my phone using my logged-in YouTube account. Since then, my YouTube page is filled with hundreds of hair braiding tutorials, in fact, this is very annoying.

Let us fix these broken recommendations by making YouTube suggest and recommend videos that are more related to us or find interesting.

How to fix YouTube recommendations Broken

When we say YouTube recommendations broken we mean YouTube is not serving you the right videos you are actually interested in.

Try any of the methods below and we can assure you that your problem will be fixed.

Method 1: Clear Browser Cookies and Site Data

Almost all websites you visit today save some files on your browser to track your activities on the website. YouTube uses this file to recommend videos to you. If you clear your cookies, YouTube may reset the way they recommend videos to you.

How to Clear YouTube Cookies and Data

In our case, we will use Chrome as our browser since it is the most used browser. Follow the steps below to clear your cache.

1. Open your internet browser.
2. On your Chrome browser, you will three vertical dots at the top right corner, click on it.
3. Now from the list of options that will be opened, click on Settings.
4. Now from the left sidebar, click on Privacy and security.
5. On the right side, click on Cookies and other site data.
6. Scroll down till you find See all cookies and site data.
7. Search youtube, make sure you type in all lowercase.
8. Click on Remove all shown.
9. A prompt will appear, click on Clear all.

How to Clear YouTube App Data

If you are using a smartphone, then the possibility of using the YouTube app is very high. Follow the steps below to clear app data.

1. On your phone, Go to Settings.
2. Then look for app management then tap on it.
3. Look through the list of apps and tap on YouTube.
4. Now tap on Storage & Cache.
5. Tap on Clear storage.
6. This will clear all cached and saved files on the app.

This may vary depending on the kind of phone you are using.

Method 2: Sign in to your Account if Not

If you are not signed in to YouTube, the system tries to pick some popular videos in your location, that are trending videos in your country or town. Also, YouTube recommends videos based on cached and cookies saved on your system.

In order to get some personalized videos or videos that are more interested in, you need to sign in to YouTube by signing in to your Gooogle Account.

With your account, you have subscribed to channels, and have watched history, and also the history of your searched terms.

Before you sign in to your account, you own either the mobile phone or computer. Else, you need to sign out immediately after usage.

Method 3: Watch Videos you find interesting on YouTube

The YouTube algorithm is made in a way that it shows you more videos you are interested in. To fine-tune the algorithm, you need to watch more videos you are interested in.

Also, try searching terms related to your interesting videos.

Doing this will change the videos YouTube recommends to you.

Method 4: Turn on YouTube Recommendation Feature

YouTube gives users the ability to turn on and off their video recommendations. This is because some user thinks Google record their activity on their website. If you have disabled the recommendation feature on YouTube then there is no way you will get a personalized recommendation.

To turn on the YouTube recommendation feature, then follow the steps below.

1. Open your YouTube.
2. Click on your profile picture, sometimes your first initial. This is located at the top right corner.
3. Click on Settings from the list of menus that will drop.
4. Look at the left sidebar and click on Notification.
5. Now on the right side, look for Recommended videos and turn it on. This is under your preferences section.

Method 5: Mark Videos you are interested in as Not Interested

This is another method that can help you fix YouTube recommendations broken problem. This method works perfectly since you are telling YouTube what you like and dislike but also takes time.

How to mark videos as not interested on YouTube

1. Open your YouTube.
2. Look for videos you are not interested in.
3. When you highlight on the video, you will see three dots vertically arranged, click on it.
4. From the menu that will appear, select Not interested and Don’t recommend channel.
5. After doing this, YouTube will now understand videos that you don’t like and remove any videos related to that.

Method 6: Clear your YouTube Search and Watch History

This is another effective way one can optimize YouTube recommendations. This is to clear all the search history and also clear all your search terms history. Follow the steps below to do these two things.

How to clear YouTube Watch History

1. Open YouTube.
2. Click on your profile picture, this is located at the top right corner of the page. It is at times your initial.
3. From the menu that will appear, select Your data in YouTube.
4. Under the YouTube controls section, look for Manage your watch history and click on it.
5. This will give you a list of all the videos you have watched on YouTube. Now click on where you see Delete with an arrow pointing downwards and select Delete all time.
6. This will give you a confirmation prompt to confirm your action of deleting all YouTube watch history. Click on Delete.

How to Clear YouTube Search History

1. Open YouTube.
2. Click on your profile picture, this is located at the top right corner of the page. It is at times your initial.
3. From the menu that will appear, select Your data in YouTube.
4. Under the YouTube controls section, look for Manage your YouTube search history and click on it.
5. This will give you a list of all search queries you have entered on YouTube. Now click on where you see Delete with an arrow pointing downwards and select Delete all time.
6. This will give you a confirmation prompt to confirm your action of deleting all YouTube watch history. Click on Delete.

Conclusion

If you think YouTube recommendations are terrible, it is not always true that YouTube recommended suck but they give out what we feed in. I know with the methods above, you have been able to fix broken YouTube recommendations.