I disabled my YouTube "Home" feed and I might like it

I've grown quite unhappy with my YouTube "Home" feed because I've subscribed to hundreds of different channels and yet I always see the same 10 creators on my "Home" page. Sure, sometimes I fancy a certain topic and appreciate different videos covering it, but it's not cool to push me into a bubble. And I'm clearly seeing only the same stuff lately.

For whatever reason, the YouTube algorithm became more aggressive for me. I don't know if YouTube changed something globally or if I reached a certain threshold to "bubble me in". Whatever happened, my video suggestions and "Home" feed reached a new boring low level. And it sucks. It sucks that YouTube doesn't show me the content I subscribed for because it thinks it knows better.

I was feeling quite stuck already when I read Herman's post "Smartphones and being present" and decided to give YouTube a try without the holy algorithm.

How?

First, you can navigate to your watch history and turn it off. After you've done that, your home feed will be empty. No random videos or engagement hacks to pull you in.

But how do you access videos on YouTube if not via the "Home" page? It's funny, because it's so obvious, but when you now go to the "Subscriptions" panel on the left side you can access all the videos of your subscribed channels in chronological order. Shocking, I know!

The videos aren't reordered, and the feed isn't optimized. It's just the videos you signed up for! Isn't that refreshing?

It's funny, because just now, I've rediscovered channels that I haven't seen in months. And when I now scroll around I can reach content I've already watched. There isn't unlimited new content and I'll have a reason to stop scrolling.

Now, I've turned off my watch history five minutes ago, and I don't know yet if algorithm-free YouTube will work for me, but I'm super excited about all the videos that I actually care about but YouTube never bothered to show me.

Do you know more tips to break free from the YouTube algorithm, if so I'd love to hear them.