I’ve noticed that the search results are getting less and less relevant to what I’m actually looking for. I guess one day the search bar will disappear like the headphone jack of the iPhone.

Louis Rossman is my Alex Jones. He's angry, compelling, and talking about something that makes him seen like a conspiracy theorist to normies. Unlike Jones, though, he's usually right (if not always, I haven't fact checked everything he's ever said). It's extremely cathartic to see someone use such extreme rhetoric to talk about privacy and software ownership and right to repair; e.g. it's not "advertiser's entitlement," it's "rapist mentality."

Ironically, youtube's inability to completely differentiate between people at the same IP has accidentally gotten my non-techie roommate into him too. I never shared his videos with her, never said anything about him, and one day I hear his voice as she browses the web. I'm so proud of her.

My least favorite thing about the "engagement friendly" slop in youtube's search results is that it takes up HALF of the results. Because clearly what I expect from SEARCHING for something is to dredge up a bunch of shit that ranges from tangentially related to completely unrelated.

For example, I too just searched a song. Let's see how that went:

7 results
4 "people also watched" videos
5 results
2 "More from [band name]" videos
2 results
3 "people also searched for" suggestions
2 results
3 "For you" vids (IS IT THE FUVKING SEARCH RESULTS I ASKED FOR???? BECAUSE IF NOT, IT'S NOT REALLY "FOR ME," IS IT?)
2 Results
3 "From related searches"
2 results

That's 20 results to 15 irrelevant pieces of ADHD triggering visual clutter. Luckily the results were actually relevant, unlike whatever you're getting.

To all the commenters saying "I have X, I don't have this problem": I have adblock, I don't have this problem, YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT:

YOUTUBE SEARCH IS BROKEN BY DEFAULT. The largest video sharing site on the internet is BROKEN BY DEFAULT. It shouldn't require extra software to function properly when functioning properly requires less work on the server's side

Youtube search results have been garbage for a while now :(

What I have noticed is that if you add “before:2025” (or any other future date) it doesn’t show the unrelated stuff.

I get nothing. Google is all pissy I turned off history and refuse to use their app. So they refuse to suggest anything.

The upside is no bloat and no ads, just have to know a topic.

Try piped. Your feed is only what you subscribe to and theres a toggle to hide shorts

Ya'll need FreeTube.

• Here's an extension which turns YouTube into an Invidious-like site, removing all addicting elements.
• If you're using Linux, I wrote the youtube-tui a few years back, very similar to the extension where you get nothing but the search bar and subscriptions.

1 minute videos aren't put into the shorts interface, so it's not YouTube noticing that you disabled shorts but rather some YouTuber trying to follow the algorithm using a channel they made for shorts and mistakenly (I assume) uploading a video longer than minute on it. All such videos appear as normal videos instead of as shorts.

Google is terrible though, so I understand why you would think that.

My three biggest problems with YouTube are:

• It sucks on desktops/laptops with bigger UI scaling enabled, some stuff just doesn't fit.

• The search function on YouTube is useless and completely broken. Instead of searching normally it:

  1. Repeats same results multiple times;

  2. Display unrelated Shorts nobody asked for;

  3. Instead of displaying relevant results it shows stuff you have already watched or picked by YouTube algorithm.

• You can't skip sponsored segments with YouTube Premium. You need SponsorBlock browser extension for that.

I simply just stopped searching or clicking on anything I'm not subbed to while logged in. It's like you commit a crime when you click something. Next ~~then~~ thing you know, that same fucking channel is following everywhere you go, in the home page and under every video you watch. Fuck google and fuck all this enshitification campaign the internet is undergoing

Firefox, uBlock Origin, on a Linux Desktop. I have none of these problems and have filters to hide shorts, endcards, autoplay, ambient mode. And I block all cookies from Youtube/Google. Works perfectly.

Their incompetence opens room for other platforms

Unusable for me with ads as well. Grey loading screen and choppy audio instead of actually loading ads, never gets to the video. If I reopen the video a few times to skip the ad the video loads fine. No problems with online gaming, streaming services, etc so I know it's their shit Roku app and ad network and not me. Ad blockers make it actually usable.

soon google will block ALL forms of front ends

I get usable results for "Boards of Canada". You've got some personal problems happening.

May I ask the name(s) of these extension(s)? Currently having this issue and that’s why I mainly use MPV to load my music playlist on.

Has been for years already sadly. I recommend https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local to watch directly and https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl to download. They both remove the dark patterns trying to abuse the attention of viewers.

also be sure to disable cookies on youtube, it gets rid of weird suggestions and usually only suggests videos related to the current one