YouTube spreads its privacy controls across several different menus, which is why people often think they’ve made their activity private when only one piece is. Your liked videos, your subscriptions, your watch history, and your playlists each have their own separate setting. Here’s all of them in one place.
Hide Your Liked Videos
Your “Liked videos” live in an actual playlist, and that playlist has its own visibility setting.
- Go to your Library and open the Liked videos playlist.
- Click the pencil/edit icon near the playlist title.
- Set visibility to Private and save.
This is Private by default on most accounts, but it’s worth confirming — especially if you’ve ever changed playlist settings in bulk.
Hide Your Subscriptions
By default, anyone visiting your channel can see which channels you subscribe to.
- Click your profile icon and go to Settings > Privacy.
- Turn on Keep all my subscriptions private.
This hides the list from your public channel page. You still get notifications and see new uploads normally, and channel owners still count you in their subscriber totals — they just can’t see you listed by name.
Pause or Clear Your Watch History
This one controls what YouTube tracks about you, not what others see.
- Go to Settings > Privacy (or your Google Account’s Data & privacy section).
- Use Pause watch history to stop new entries, and clear existing history if you want a clean slate.
Worth knowing the tradeoff: pausing watch history significantly degrades your recommendations, since YouTube has nothing to base them on. Many people prefer to clear specific entries rather than pause tracking entirely.
Check Your Other Playlists
Every playlist you’ve created has its own independent visibility setting (Public, Unlisted, or Private). A playlist you made years ago could still be Public without you realizing. Go through your Library and review each one — this is the setting people most often miss.
Hide Your Subscriber Count
If you don’t want your own subscriber number displayed publicly, that’s under YouTube Studio > Settings > Channel > Advanced settings — a separate toggle from everything above.
What You Can’t Make Private
- Your comments — anything you post publicly is tied to your channel name and visible to anyone.
- View counts on your videos — there’s no setting to hide these from viewers.
- The fact that you liked or disliked a video is already anonymous to everyone else, including the creator — so there’s nothing to hide there in the first place.
A Note on Multiple Accounts
All of these settings apply per channel/account. If you use a Brand Account alongside your personal one, check the settings on each separately — configuring one doesn’t affect the other.
FAQ
Is my Liked Videos playlist private by default?
Usually yes, but it’s worth confirming in your Library since playlist settings can be changed.
Does hiding subscriptions affect my notifications?
No. You still get notifications and see new uploads normally — only the public list on your channel page is hidden.
What happens if I pause my watch history?
It significantly degrades your recommendations, since YouTube has no data to base them on. Clearing specific entries is often a better middle ground.
Do my privacy settings apply to all my playlists at once?
No. Each playlist has its own independent visibility setting, so you need to review them individually.