I had this problem for a long time, the only thing that worked was installing an ad on that removes recommendations. The only thing I use youtube for today is intentionally following ASL (starcraft broodwar) in korea.

The ad-on makes the home screen completely white/empty, meaning I just get reminded constantly ohh, yeah I am not supposed to use youtube unless there is something particular I want to watch.

You can do this without addons. I turned off recommendations and history, so I get nothing in my feed and YouTube wont even give me a queue of shorts to scroll through. I have to be very intentional on YouTube now and it has cut my usage down a ton.

I have had this set for a while now and anytime I see someone elses youtube page I am horrified.

Probably the first setting I would recommend for anyone to enable.

Where you do this?

I suggest this: <https://lawrencehook.com/rys/>

I guess that only works if you are logged in?

It’s very surprising that YT even have this option, as it’s not really in Google’s best interests to allow people to unhook themselves.

I use "Code Injector" extension which is available for firefox and chrome. You can add custom javascript and css to any page. I usually inspect the page, find the classes or ids of the elements I want to get rid of, and do a display:none on them.

Yes, the easy custom solution for any site, if you know a little js and html.

Can you get rid of ads by this method?

I'm in the exact same boat. I spend too much time on YT and only thing I really want it for is ASL. I'll probably try the plugin.