Nov 27, 2025 15:00:00

The number of videos displayed at the top of YouTube is declining rapidly and may reach zero by 2026

While YouTube's homepage has undergone some minor changes, its core concept of showing 'recommended videos' remains consistent. While a maximum of 30 thumbnails were displayed around 2019, by 2025, that number will be reduced. 'If this trend continues, the number of videos displayed on the homepage will be zero,' web developer and blogger Jaden Milne quipped.

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Below, Milne shows what YouTube will look like on a 32-inch 1440p display in April 2025. Five videos are recommended, and the remaining one-sixth of the screen is dedicated to ads. Milne described the current situation, with large thumbnails and ads taking up one-sixth of the screen, as 'abominable.'

Below is a screenshot of the YouTube homepage as of January 2019, taken using the Internet Archive. The thumbnails are smaller than those in 2025, and there are 30 videos displayed. While banner ads may appear, they are not easily confused with the video thumbnails.

Comparing these figures, Milne created the following graph, which plots the number of videos displayed on YouTube's homepage in January 2019 and April 2025. Based on this rate of decline, YouTube will only have one video displayed on its homepage in May 2026, and no videos at all by September.

The first graph is an analysis based on results from January 2019 and April 2025, but when Milne accessed YouTube on Apple TV in November 2025, an advertisement was displayed in the upper left corner of the homepage, and only one recommended video was displayed, as shown below.

Initial analysis predicted that the number of recommended videos on the homepage would be reduced to one in May 2026, but in reality, by November 2025, there was already only one. Taking into account the increasing size of the recommended video thumbnails, Milne concluded, 'There are people who need glasses on YouTube, and their myopia is accelerating.'

Milne's blog post was written with a touch of irony and humor, and it's not possible to analyze a graph created from two states as 'zero recommended videos on the homepage.' However, the YouTube homepage issue has sparked significant discussion on Hacker News, with

some lamenting the ever-increasing number of ads, others criticizing the YouTube app as 'anti-competitive,' and others pointing out that 'it's not YouTube's fault, it's the YouTube app on Apple TV that's the worst.' Others have suggested that the larger recommended videos are intended to increase clicks and ad revenue by making thumbnails easier to see and encouraging doomscrolling . Others have argued that while easy-to-see thumbnails are a good thing, YouTube's autoplay feature means that thumbnails that are too large are distracting when scrolling.

On the other hand, some people believe that it is better to have zero videos recommended by the algorithm displayed on the homepage, and that it is healthier to search for and watch only the videos you want to watch, so some people say that it is better to use the option to turn off YouTube history to prevent videos from being displayed on the homepage.