Chrome and Firefox guide
Clean up YouTube Home and choose your thumbnail size
Hide the Home inserts you do not want and fit more videos into your browser window. Each control is optional, so you can keep YouTube's usual layout or change just one thing.
Find the Home controls
- Install ChannelFence from the Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-ons. If YouTube was already open, refresh that tab.
- Open YouTube's Home page.
- Open your browser's extensions menu and select ChannelFence, or click its pinned toolbar icon.
- Turn on the controls you want. For full explanations, choose Manage block list at the bottom of the popup to open settings.
The Home controls start off. Your choices save automatically on this device and are shared by the popup and settings. Keep Enable ChannelFence switched on for them to take effect.
Hide sponsored cards on Home
Turn on Hide sponsored cards on Home to remove supported sponsored video cards from the Home feed. You do not need to block each advertiser as a creator.
This control applies to Home feed cards. It does not skip ads playing inside videos or sponsored Shorts in the Shorts viewer.
Hide annoying YouTube features
Turn on Hide annoying YouTube features to remove these supported inserts from Home:
- Explore more topics sections inside the feed.
- Playables and game shelves.
- Featured and promotional banners, including YouTube's featured information panels.
- Premium and Primetime offers.
- Recommendation prompts and feedback surveys.
The category filters across the top of Home, ordinary recommendations, courses, and mixes remain available unless their creators are blocked. Sponsored cards and Shorts have their own switches.
To remove Shorts shelves and cards too, turn on Hide Shorts in feeds. That option also covers supported search and other feeds; the Shorts tab and direct viewer stay available. See the Shorts guide for details.
Make thumbnails smaller or larger
Turn on Compact Home grid, then choose a Thumbnail size:
- Small: fit more videos across the page, up to six columns when there is enough room.
- Medium: the default size, with up to five columns.
- Large: larger thumbnails, with up to four columns.
The number of columns adjusts to the space available in your browser. Window width, browser zoom, and YouTube's sidebar all affect it. A smaller window can show fewer columns at any size, so there is no need to choose a monitor resolution.
The compact grid applies to Home. You can use it on its own, or combine it with the hiding options above.
Return to your usual layout
Turn off Compact Home grid to restore YouTube's layout. Switch off either Home hiding option to show those inserts again. These changes leave your creator block list intact.
To pause everything together, turn off Enable ChannelFence. This pauses creator blocking, feed hiding, and the compact grid. Turn it back on to resume your saved choices.
If something still appears
Check that you are on Home, ChannelFence is enabled, and the relevant switch is on. If the controls are missing, update to the latest ChannelFence version. After an extension update, refresh YouTube to load the current controls.
YouTube changes its layouts, and a new type of insert may need support. Report an example with the page URL, a screenshot, your ChannelFence version, both interface languages, and the setting you enabled.
Make room for the videos you want.
ChannelFence is free, open source, and keeps your preferences locally.