An attempt to redesign my YouTube homepage • Started 4 December 2022

I wanted to redesign my YouTube homepage, mainly because it’s become by mindless go-to. I know how useful it is as a platform—it’s practically become the new search engine. But aside from its practical use, it has become my mindless go-to. By that I mean, I'd always open my browser the moment I boot up my computer and immediately type youtube.com. And observing this has somehow haunted me. It’s basically my version of checking the fridge to see if there’s anything I could munch on, even when I wasn’t hungry. YouTube gives me shelf upon shelf of snackable things and most of the time, they’re all junk. So here I am with an exercise, because there might just be a way for me to make this happen someday.


Someone’s already designed a ‘distraction-free’ YouTube experience via plugins like what you see applied above (see icon on the upper right corner), where the YouTube homepage is emptied. While it has served its purpose of helping me use YouTube more mindfully, the sea of black is just disconcerting.

So! Here’s an attempt to design my ideal YouTube homepage, which has the following:

    1. My top 4 channels with their most recent uploads (4 would be a good control for the main highlights, because you really can’t love everything, right?) - These will be defined by the fact that I have subscribed to these channels (a deliberate decision to receive updates) + frequency of viewing (What better way to define your favorites than by how often you keep coming back to their stuff, right?)
    2. Random recommendations from 3 channels I’ve subscribed to and used to watch often, but have not seen any videos from in 6 months - This is for discoverability within a familiar selection! Also a good prompt to revisit my subscription if any of the channels no longer connects with me.  
    3. A row for news - basically just an import of the existing news row but as a carousel of sorts, because I don’t have a TV
    4. An expandable grid of recommendations - an import of YouTube’s recommendations, because I also don’t want to live in my bubble, but I also don’t want to keep mindlessly watching stuff; also ‘expandable’, because this section should be collapsed or hidden by default