This is my YouTube homepage.

and my video player:

I only use the subscriptions page, in which I am subscribed to ~100 channels. This video by Technology Connection inspired me to write a tiny bit here on removing algorithms from my life. In that video, he shows that only 3% of his views come from the subscriptions page: I encourage you to try out only using the subscriptions page.

Last year, I found myself getting distracted by YouTube's algorithm suggested videos. I'd get sucked into a rabbit hole of 'one more video', desperately refreshing the home page to find something 'interesting'.

I started by blocking videos that I had already watched, which you can also do with these uBlock Origin filters.(archive link).

I didn't find that quite effective enough, so I just removed all recommendations. All of them. All that was left was the subscriptions page. I gained nothing from those random videos and found myself with more time to do things I actually wanted to do. Motivation, which I sort of want to talk about in another post, grows when you don't have an easy time sink.

You can remove those algorithm suggestion for yourself with this uBlock Origin filter list. (archive link)

To make the video player centered, add this:

! Right bar on video player
www.youtube.com###secondary