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Door staff@engadget.com (Ben Stegner) - 30 Aug 2026
In the Personalization settings menu discussed earlier, the Manage YouTube History link provides a full list of what you've done on the platform and gives fine-grained control over your historical data. Similar to the above, hit the X next to any entry to remove it from your log. To filter the results, click the calendar icon to only show entries from before a certain date or the search icon to look for specific terms.
This tool also holds a Delete button to mass-remove your historical data from the service. You have options to delete data from today, a specific time period or everything. The specific time periods are suitable when you have a block of unwanted watching, like if you've been troubleshooting a car problem but don't otherwise care about auto videos.
You might have seen advice to completely wipe your YouTube history to improve recommendations, but whether you should do this depends on your situation. If your suggestions are completely terrible and nothing you see is at all relevant, then nuking and starting over can work. When you start from nothing, YouTube shows you the same "broad appeal" videos you see when you aren't signed in, and it takes time to build up a revamped profile. If you go this route, it's smart to have a list of channels you like on hand so you can start retraining YouTube right away after clearing.
Otherwise, more selective deletion offers a better balance. If you were really into gardening six months ago but have fallen out of love with it recently, use the custom range option to clear history from that period while keeping more recent data. From there, giving YouTube those discussed positive and negative signals should result in fewer poor recommendations, and hopefully fewer AI slop videos, over time.
This tool also holds a Delete button to mass-remove your historical data from the service. You have options to delete data from today, a specific time period or everything. The specific time periods are suitable when you have a block of unwanted watching, like if you've been troubleshooting a car problem but don't otherwise care about auto videos.
You might have seen advice to completely wipe your YouTube history to improve recommendations, but whether you should do this depends on your situation. If your suggestions are completely terrible and nothing you see is at all relevant, then nuking and starting over can work. When you start from nothing, YouTube shows you the same "broad appeal" videos you see when you aren't signed in, and it takes time to build up a revamped profile. If you go this route, it's smart to have a list of channels you like on hand so you can start retraining YouTube right away after clearing.
Otherwise, more selective deletion offers a better balance. If you were really into gardening six months ago but have fallen out of love with it recently, use the custom range option to clear history from that period while keeping more recent data. From there, giving YouTube those discussed positive and negative signals should result in fewer poor recommendations, and hopefully fewer AI slop videos, over time.