How can I stop YouTube showing me links to suggested videos?

September 30, 2023 10:19 AM

Sometimes I need to look at a YouTube video that is not embedded in a web page, because a link sends me to YouTube itself. When that happens, the regular YouTube page contains not just the video I want to watch: it contains a long list of other videos suggested by YouTube. They are intensely distracting for me – I can't stop noticing them, and merely looking at them destroys my concentration even if I never click on any of them. Is there any extension for Safari (or another browser) that will remove those suggested videos completely?

The list of suggested videos that I'm talking about is what shows up along the right-hand side next to the video in question. I know that resizing the browser window to make it narrower will shift the list to appear below the target video instead of along the right-hand side, but that's not helpful enough because I still see the images and text. I also know that I can play the destination video in full-screen mode and it will make the list disappear – unfortunately, that doesn't help because I have to first land on the YT page and look for the controls, and usually by then I've already noticed the other videos. I use a separate work account for YT and at least the topics of the suggestions are more limited than they might be otherwise. (And to be clear: the issue here is not the nature of the topics.) I'd like to get rid of them completely.

I've looked in my account settings on YouTube and disabled things like the notifications for recommended videos and anything else that looked like it might affect this. I generally use Safari on a Mac. I've tried the Safari extension "No Distractions for YouTube" but it doesn't seem to do anything. I'm happy to pay for an extension, and/or configure a blocker as necessary, or use another browser or application just for opening YouTube videos, if that's what it takes.

I understand that forcing me to see the suggestions and stealing my attention is part of YouTube's business model. I have attentional difficulties and this is detrimental to my ability to function. I avoid YT as much as possible, but sometimes it's impossible because so many companies and orgs insist on putting tutorials and information videos on YT. Making the experience less distracting would be very helpful for me.

posted by StrawberryPie to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Currently those suggested videos are in an element with the id "related". The use of an actual word, rather than a random series of letters and numbers, is good because it suggests that should continue to be true for a while (though websites do redesign themselves from time to time). You could block #related in an adblocker, or write a userstyle, or use an existing userstyle, or an extension, or whatever.
posted by one for the books at 10:40 AM on September 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

DF Tube (free for Chrome)
Focus (for Youtube) (works in safari, $0.99)
posted by O9scar at 11:22 AM on September 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: There's also UnTrap, free (both Safari and Chrome).
posted by O9scar at 11:29 AM on September 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Also, especially if you need to refer to a video multiple times, you can always just download it using yt-dlp or similar. Sometimes I download links from sites I don't want to interact with and then just delete them afterwards.
posted by trig at 12:16 PM on September 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

For completeness, though I think the previous answers are probably better, you can use libredirect, a Firefox extension, to redirect YouTube links to Invidious, an alternative, unofficial YouTube web interface. You can disable showing related videos in the Invidious preferences.
posted by BungaDunga at 2:22 PM on September 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

You can install FreeTube to watch YT videos free of tracking and algorithms. And you can use a browser add-on to point any YT links to FreeTube.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:39 AM on October 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Unhook for Firefox does this really well. It can remove everything except the video, you can customise which parts to keep (e.g. keep the playlist view but remove related videos and comments)
posted by snusmumrik at 6:35 AM on October 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you, everyone, for all the replies! This was better than I hoped. I ended up trying Untrap first and it's working very well. As a bonus, it has a ton of configuration options to control what is shown.

I'm keeping the other answers in the wings in case alternatives are ever needed.
posted by StrawberryPie at 9:13 AM on October 8, 2023