15 votes

[SOLVED] How can I hide streams from my YouTube subscriptions page?

Picture explanation:

https://i.horizon.pics/tWovRax4kh.jpg


When I view my subscriptions page on YouTube, half the "videos" are recordings of completed streams, often 2+ hours in length. I'm not interested in watching these. For me, they're just pollution in the feed.

Apparently, a lot of the channels I subscribe to, whose videos I enjoy watching, also stream on YouTube a lot.

Second Wind is probably the channel I'm most hung up about. I like their normal videos, and don't want to unsubscribe from their channel, but jesus they stream two or three times a day.

(Also, it's annoying that when I view a YouTube channel, I can visit their videos page or their streams page separately. Why can't I have this same separation on my own subscriptions page?)

(Also also, I already use an extension to hide shorts (among other things), but it unfortunately does not have a feature for hiding streams.)

Fancy bullet point summary:

  • I want to hide recorded streams from my subscriptions page
    • I don't care as much about hiding active livestreams, because those don't pollute my subscriptions page nearly as much
  • I do not want to unsubscribe from any of the channels I follow. That is not an option
  • I'm willing to stop using youtube.com in favor of an alternative client (web, desktop, etc) if that client supports hiding recorded streams from actual videos
  • I'm willing to install a browser extension that can solve this problem (but I can't find one for Firefox)

Ninja edit:

While writing up this topic, I actually found my own solution. The browser extension I mentioned earlier has an "advanced blocking" feature that takes a JavaScript function as input. The extension's GitHub page has an issue, with a comment, with some code to hide streamed videos on the subscriptions page.

However, that code didn't work when I tried it. Thankfully, I just needed to check for videoRenderer instead of gridVideoRenderer.

Here's the updated code:

(video, objectType) => {
    // Only videos on the Subscription page
    if ( objectType === "videoRenderer" ) {
        if ( video.hasOwnProperty("badges") && video.badges.includes("live") ) {
	    return true;
        }
        if ( video.hasOwnProperty("publishTimeText") && video.publishTimeText.indexOf("Streamed") != -1 ) {
            return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

I have no idea what the consequences of checking against videoRenderer instead of gridVideoRenderer might be, and right now I'm too lazy to find out. This works well enough for now.

(The "consequence" might be that streams are hidden from the related/recommended videos in the sidebar of a video page? I actually hide that sidebar, so I wouldn't know. Oh, and they'll probably be hidden from a channel's streams feed.)

It isn't a perfect solution though. Streams that are "scheduled" still show up on the subscriptions page. However, I think channels can set streams and videos as scheduled? So blocking one without the other would be more complicated?

I welcome any feedback or improvements on the code.

8 comments

  1. fefellama
    Link
    I don't know the answer to this, but I agree that it's very annoying. I feel similarly about shorts vs long-form videos. There are some channels that I love the shorts of but dislike the...

    I don't know the answer to this, but I agree that it's very annoying. I feel similarly about shorts vs long-form videos. There are some channels that I love the shorts of but dislike the long-form, and then others where I love their regular videos but dislike the shorts. Would be nice to subscribe to each individually.

    As it stands, my subscriptions page is near useless, so I end up going through my list of subscriptions and just manually checking out a couple of them that I haven't checked on in a while or just feel like watching.

    6 votes
  2. Hobofarmer
    Link
    I like that browser extension for blocking shorts. Is there a way to get that on the mobile app for Android and ios? I really wish there was a simple switch to toggle but of course there isn't...

    I like that browser extension for blocking shorts. Is there a way to get that on the mobile app for Android and ios? I really wish there was a simple switch to toggle but of course there isn't...

    4 votes
  3. [2]
    DFGdanger
    Link
    I have these filters in uBlock Origin that I probably found on reddit somewhere ! YT Live Videos...

    I have these filters in uBlock Origin that I probably found on reddit somewhere

    ! YT Live Videos
    www.youtube.com##:is(ytd-rich-item-renderer,ytd-grid-video-renderer,ytd-compact-video-renderer):has(.badge-style-type-live-now-alternate)
    ! YT Streamed
    www.youtube.com##:is(ytd-rich-item-renderer,ytd-grid-video-renderer,ytd-compact-video-renderer):has([aria-label~="Streamed"])
    
    4 votes
    1. Eji1700
      Link Parent
      I'll just throw on that Ublock has a very intuitive block feature for figuring out the actual element/section you want to block when you're dealing with nonsense like this. Right click on the...

      I'll just throw on that Ublock has a very intuitive block feature for figuring out the actual element/section you want to block when you're dealing with nonsense like this.

      Right click on the thing you want to block, select block element, and it'll highlight in red what it things you want. If that's not it, there's two sliders below that if you mess with, will navigate the element tree in different ways, highlighting all the time and changing the text above. Makes it very very easy to block things that are hard to just select.

      2 votes
  4. [2]
    Khalos
    Link
    I've decided that channels that do this just aren't worth it anymore. I was a Patreon supporter of Second Wind when they first started, but there was a day where 6 of my top 8 videos on my...

    I've decided that channels that do this just aren't worth it anymore. I was a Patreon supporter of Second Wind when they first started, but there was a day where 6 of my top 8 videos on my subscription page were all from them and none of them were what I really wanted from the channel. I've now cancelled my Patreon and unsubscribed from their channel on YouTube. I still watch every Fully/Semi Ramblomatic and some Design Delves.

    The algorithm seems to understand I like those specifically, but not all of their livestreams even though I've unsubscribed.

    3 votes
    1. DFGdanger
      Link Parent
      I also liked Frost's Cold Take series but he had a falling out with Second Wind and accuses Nick Calandra of some bad journalistic and business practices. He has his own channel set up now but...

      I also liked Frost's Cold Take series but he had a falling out with Second Wind and accuses Nick Calandra of some bad journalistic and business practices. He has his own channel set up now but videos are posted much less frequently. Anyway, when that happened, I realized that I too was only interested in a small portion of the videos they were making, so I unsubscribed. And yeah the algorithm still sends me Fully Ramblomatic. I think I wouldn't mind the odd Bytesized Review or The Backdrop to come my way but it kind of depends on what game or movie they're talking about for me to be interested.

      1 vote
  5. [2]
    Rudism
    Link
    I used to watch a lot more YouTube in the days before shorts, but I can barely stand it anymore. I have been considering writing some shell scripts and cron jobs to download new videos from the...

    I used to watch a lot more YouTube in the days before shorts, but I can barely stand it anymore. I have been considering writing some shell scripts and cron jobs to download new videos from the few channels that I still care about into Plex (using something like yt-dlp, which I think has rich enough filtering that you could exclude shorts and live streams). Like if it's a choice between fiddling with browser extensions (that probably won't work across all the devices I watch on) to hide unwanted stuff, or fiddling with yt-dlp so I can watch using apps that I actually enjoy using then I'd rather spend my time on the latter.

    2 votes
    1. hobbes64
      Link Parent
      I've been using FreeTube for a while, it works on windows, mac, and linux. You can subscribe to whatever channels you want and it doesn't show you suggestions or trending unless you want it to.

      I've been using FreeTube for a while, it works on windows, mac, and linux. You can subscribe to whatever channels you want and it doesn't show you suggestions or trending unless you want it to.

      1 vote