FocusTube Remove YouTube distractions
How to remove YouTube distractions
You open YouTube for one tutorial and, forty minutes later, you’re watching a video about deep-sea creatures you never chose. That’s not a lack of willpower — it’s the design. Here’s how to strip the distractions out of YouTube: first with its own settings, then the one-click way that actually removes all of them.
Why YouTube keeps pulling you in
YouTube’s job is to maximise watch time, so almost every surface exists to serve you the next video: the homepage feed, the “up next” sidebar, end-screen cards over the last seconds of a video, autoplay, and the endless swipe of Shorts. Each one is a fresh decision to make — and every decision is a chance to get pulled off track. Remove the surfaces and the pull disappears.
Option 1: YouTube’s built-in settings
YouTube gives you a few native controls. They help, but none of them clears the screen completely:
- Turn off Autoplay — the toggle above the sidebar stops the next video from playing automatically.
- Pause watch history — go to youtube.com/feed/history and choose “Pause watch history.” Your homepage goes mostly blank, but the sidebar and Shorts stay.
- Don’t recommend channel — the three-dot menu on any video lets you mute a channel, one at a time.
- Take-a-break and bedtime reminders — under Settings → General, these nudge you but don’t hide anything.
The catch: even with all of these on, the sidebar recommendations, end-screen suggestions, comments, and Shorts are still right there. Native settings reduce the noise — they don’t remove it.
Option 2: Hide everything at once
The complete fix is a browser extension that hides the distracting elements while leaving search and the video player untouched. FocusTube does exactly this on any Chromium browser — Chrome, Edge, or Brave. Here is what it removes, and how to switch it on.
Step by step
- Install FocusTube from the Chrome Web Store — free 7-day trial, no card.
- Open YouTube and click the FocusTube icon.
- Turn on Focus Mode — the homepage feed, sidebar recommendations, comments, and end-screen overlays vanish instantly.
- Flip on Shorts-free mode to block every Short: the homepage shelves, the sidebar entry, and the vertical swipe player. Regular videos keep working.
- Toggle Hide sidebar if you want YouTube’s left navigation gone too, for a bare, focused page.
- Set a Focus Lock timer — 15, 30, 60 minutes, or a custom length — to commit to a session. Focus Mode can’t be switched off until the timer ends.
Search still works perfectly the whole time. You look up what you came for, watch it, and there’s simply nothing else on screen begging for the next click.
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Add to ChromeWhat about blocking YouTube Shorts?
Shorts are the hardest to escape because there’s no native off switch. Shorts-free mode removes them at the root: the shelves woven into your homepage and subscriptions, the Shorts button in the sidebar, and the full-screen swipe player. If you land on a Short’s URL, it quietly sends you to the normal watch page instead. Long-form videos are untouched.
Does this hurt search or subscriptions?
No. The whole point is to hide the noise, not the tool. Search, your subscriptions page, playlists, and the video player all keep working normally. You’re removing the recommendation surfaces, not YouTube itself. And because FocusTube runs entirely in your browser with no account and no tracking, none of your activity leaves your device.
The bottom line
If you just want to calm things down, turn off Autoplay and pause your watch history. If you want YouTube to actually stay quiet — no feed, no recommendations, no Shorts, no comments — an extension is the only complete fix.
Common questions
Can I turn off YouTube recommendations completely?
YouTube has no single setting to turn off recommendations everywhere. You can pause watch history to blank the homepage, but the sidebar ‘up next’, end screens, and Shorts remain. A browser extension like FocusTube hides all of them at once while keeping search working.
How do I stop the YouTube rabbit hole?
Remove the surfaces that pull you in: the homepage feed, the sidebar recommendations, end-screen suggestions, and Shorts. When those are gone you watch the video you searched for and then stop, instead of being fed the next thing automatically.
How do I block YouTube Shorts?
There is no native toggle to block Shorts. FocusTube’s Shorts-free mode removes every Short — the shelves on the homepage, the sidebar entry, and the vertical swipe player — while normal videos keep working.