[Fix] YouTube Home Feed is Empty or Blank with No Video Recommendations
If YouTube homepage feed is empty in your smartphone or YouTube.com website is showing a blank homepage in computer web browser, this article will help you in fixing the issue and enabling the missing video recommendations section back on YouTube homepage.
When a user opens YouTube app in smartphone or browse YouTube.com website in web browser, the home feed page looks empty or blank and doesn’t show any recommended videos list as shown in following screenshot:
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As you can see in the above screenshot, the homepage or home feed of YouTube looks clean and empty and video recommendations are missing on the page.
The new empty homepage shows following message:
Make YouTube your own
Watch history allows us to show you the latest videos tailored to your interests.
[Leave history off] [Turn on history]
As the error message mentions the change occurred due to user’s watch history turned off. All YouTube users who have disabled their watch history in YouTube settings, will get the above mentioned error message and blank homepage in YouTube.
Actually YouTube team announced this change on August 08, 2023 on official YouTube community page. According to new YouTube rules, if a user has turned off watch history, the home feed will disable the video recommendations list automatically and will become empty or blank.
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Here is what the official announcement says:
One of the benefits of having YouTube watch history on is that it enables YouTube to provide video recommendations you may be interested in; however, we know some prefer to clear and turn off your YouTube watch history. Starting today, we’re changing how you see recommendations on YouTube, based on your Watch History settings:
Starting today, if you have YouTube watch history off and have no significant prior watch history, features that require watch history to provide video recommendations will be disabled – like your YouTube home feed. This means that starting today, your home feed may look a lot different: you’ll be able to see the search bar and the left-hand guide menu, with no feed of recommended videos thus allowing you to more easily search, browse subscribed channels and explore Topic tabs instead.
We’re rolling these changes out slowly, over the next few months. 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.
So if you want to restore previous video recommendations section on YouTube home feed page, you’ll need to enable watch history feature. Click on “Turn on history” button given on the error message and it’ll ask for confirmation by showing following message:
Turn on watch history?
Your private YouTube watch history makes your recently-watched videos on YouTube easy to find and improves recommendations in YouTube and other Google products.
When YouTube watch history is on, this data may be saved from any of your signed-in devices. You can always control and review your activity at My Account.
Again click on “Turn on” button given on the confirmation box and it’ll enable watch history in your YouTube account and the home feed page will start showing recommended videos again.
If you prefer to have the blank or empty home feed page in YouTube, click on “Leave history off” button on the error message and the message will change to following:
Your watch history is off
You can change your setting at any time to get the latest videos tailored to you.
Users can also manage the watch history setting using following direct link:
Google Account Activity Control Page
Here you can turn on/off your watch history, location history, etc quickly and easily.
What do you think about this change on YouTube homepage? Feel free to share your feedback and experience in comments section.
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Advising people to turn their browsing history on is in my opinion a bad idea. You should be advising them to report this as a bug to Google and YouTube so that they fix this and stop asking people to enable and share their history with Google!
^^ It’s not a bug or known issue but a forced feature by YouTube team. If we want video recommendations, we’ll have to enable watch history.
Not a problem, they actually did me a favor. Unfortunately, there won’t be enough people to stand up and do the same or say anything, so they’ll probably get away with it.