5 Best Chrome Extensions to Clean Up YouTube in 2026

Why Your YouTube Feed Feels Broken

YouTube's homepage optimizes for watch time, not for you. It resurfaces videos you already finished, pads the grid with algorithmic Mixes, and pushes Shorts between the videos you actually subscribed for. The result is a feed where finding something new takes longer than watching it.

The extensions below each attack a different part of that problem. Together they can turn YouTube back into a tool instead of a slot machine.

1. YouTube Remove Watched Videos and Mixes (Best for a Fresh Feed)

Our YouTube Remove Watched Videos and Mixes extension does exactly what its name says: it removes videos you have already watched and auto-generated Mixes from your homepage, subscriptions, and search results. No dashboards, no settings maze — install it and your feed only shows content you have not seen yet.

• Best for: keeping your homepage and subscriptions feed permanently fresh.
• Standout feature: handles both watched videos and Mixes, the two biggest sources of feed clutter.
• Privacy: runs entirely in your browser — no data is collected, stored, or shared.

2. Unhook

Unhook is the scalpel of YouTube extensions: it lets you individually disable the homepage feed, related videos, comments, Shorts, end screens, and more. If you want YouTube reduced to a plain search box, Unhook can get you there.

• Best for: aggressively minimal YouTube with granular toggles.
• Watch out for: it hides sections wholesale — it will not filter watched videos out of the feed you keep.

3. SponsorBlock

SponsorBlock uses crowdsourced timestamps to automatically skip sponsor reads, intros, outros, and self-promotion inside videos. It cleans up the videos themselves rather than the feed, which makes it the perfect companion to a feed-cleaning extension.

• Best for: skipping in-video sponsor segments automatically.
• Watch out for: segment accuracy depends on community submissions, so brand-new videos may not be covered yet.

4. Enhancer for YouTube

Enhancer for YouTube is the Swiss Army knife: playback speed controls, volume boost, cinema mode, custom themes, and dozens of quality-of-life tweaks. It is less focused than the other picks but covers an enormous amount of ground in one install.

• Best for: power users who want to customize every part of the player.
• Watch out for: the settings page can be overwhelming if you only need one or two fixes.

5. PocketTube

If your problem is too many subscriptions rather than too many watched videos, PocketTube organizes channels into groups — news, music, tech — so you can browse one topic at a time instead of one giant chronological pile.

• Best for: organizing hundreds of subscriptions into browsable groups.
• Watch out for: it adds interface elements rather than removing them, so it pairs best with a decluttering extension.

The Bottom Line

Start with YouTube Remove Watched Videos and Mixes to get a feed that only shows new content, add SponsorBlock to clean up the videos themselves, and reach for Unhook if you want to go fully minimal. Your watch history should be a memory, not a recommendation engine.