I’m using a stock Samsung Galaxy 8 phone right now (with Android 10) and I disabled the YouTube app. I was basically sick of its s***. Since then, I never sign in to the app/site, and so may aspects of using the site are much better now.
Everything is faster, since they don’t know me / aren’t tracking as much.
I always open YT in Firefox Focus, which doesn’t ever keep cookies or history each time I close it, so there’s no history for YT to mine each time I visit again.
I’m pretty sure I see fewer ads since I don’t have a deep history for YT to mine / target.
More random suggestions from YT means I am mostly broken out of the bubble caused by their tracking. I find new, interesting music, for instance, now, from the suggestions.
Hitting “back” in the browser means I go back wherever I was before, not to the YT home page (like the app used to do to me)
I still visit the site often, and appreciate all the good music and channels I watch, but now it’s overall a much more positive experience, more like YT was a few years ago versus the horrible mess it’s become recently.
I’d still appreciate any other tips anyone has for making YT visits even more enjoyable.
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As a Pixel user, I don’t appear to have the option of uninstalling YouTube. Imagine that.
Just know, I can’t uninstall it either. Instead I went into the Android settings, did Force Stop on the YT app, and then I was able to Disable it.
Thanks for the info. I’ll do that.
You can install revanced and make it your default app for YouTube links
But you have a bloat free device…/s
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Try the Universal Android Debloater. Or switch to GrapheneOS.
As a pixel user, you are able to install graphene OS!
Yeah, Graphene is the way to go.