How do I change the layout of the YouTube homepage?

Last reviewed: October 14, 2026 · Markdown version

You can change what fills YouTube's Home page and what colour it is drawn in, but YouTube's help documents no setting for the grid itself. We read four YouTube help pages about Home today: the guide to finding your way around, the recommendations page, the custom feed page and the dark theme page. None of them mentions videos per row, thumbnail size, or a switch back to an earlier design (YouTube Help: Find your way around YouTube (computer), read 14 October 2026). So this page covers what Home is built from, the controls that genuinely change it, and the honest answer to “how do I get the old one back”.

What Home is built from

YouTube describes two different Home pages. Signed out or brand new, “the Home page will show you the most popular videos on YouTube”. Signed in, once you start watching, “the Home page will show you recommended videos based on your preferences and activity on YouTube” (YouTube Help: Find your way around YouTube (computer), read 14 October 2026).

Our reading, not YouTube's wording: if Home suddenly looks like a wall of popular videos that have nothing to do with you, check that you are still signed in before changing anything else. Everything below assumes you are.

The controls that change what Home shows

All four come from one page (YouTube Help: Manage your recommendations & search results, read 14 October 2026):

Topics. “If you only want to see recommended content about a specific subject, explore topics on the Home and watch pages.” They are not a free choice of subject: YouTube says topics “are based on your existing, personalized suggestions”. When a video under a topic does not belong there, tap More beside it and choose Not followed by the topic name.
Per-video and per-channel feedback. Not interested and Don't recommend channel, from the More menu. How these work, and how to clear them, is on our page about resetting recommendations.
Fewer Shorts. In the app, at the top of a grid of Shorts on Home, More then Show fewer Shorts. YouTube's word is “fewer”; whether Shorts can be switched off has its own page.
No recommendations at all. “If you don’t want video recommendations on Home, you can delete and turn off your watch history.” That is the most drastic change to Home there is, and it is a history decision rather than a layout one.

Videos that start playing as you scroll past them are a playback setting, not a layout one; turning off autoplay and previews covers it.

Your custom feed: a test, in one country

The newest Home control is a prompt. YouTube's page is explicit about its status: “This experimental feature is currently available in English in the United States. Availability may change in the future.” To see it you must be signed in, have your YouTube watch and search history turned on, and set your device language to English (YouTube Help: Create & manage your custom feed on YouTube Home, read 14 October 2026).

Where it is offered, go to the Home tab, choose Your custom feed at the top, and type what you want or pick a suggested prompt. The same page sets the limits:

“You can maintain one custom feed at a time.” Change it by editing the prompt.
“Custom feed prompts expire after 30 days of inactivity.”
It is “private and unique to your account”.
“Videos you watch from this feed are added to your standard watch history. These watches may influence your main Home recommendations.”

And the way out is written down too: “You can return to your standard YouTube experience at any time by selecting the Home option from the top of your Home feed.”

The colours: dark, light or device theme

This one is a real appearance setting. On a computer, click your profile picture, then Appearance, and choose Dark theme, Light theme or Use device theme. YouTube adds that Ambient mode needs dark theme switched on first (YouTube Help: Watch YouTube in Dark theme, read 14 October 2026).

Can you change it back to the old layout?

Not through any setting YouTube documents. The four pages cited above describe no way to choose an earlier design and nothing about grid density. Three cases look like “Home changed” and do have an answer:

It is showing things you do not watch. That is recommendations, and the controls above are the fix.
It is showing one subject only. A topic or a custom feed is selected; choose Home at the top to get the standard feed back.
It is showing popular videos to everybody. You may be signed out, which is the version YouTube describes for viewers who have not signed in.

Browser extensions that rearrange YouTube's grid exist; we have not reviewed any, and they are outside what this page covers.

The Subscriptions page has its own layout

Home is not the only feed. YouTube's guide says the “Subscriptions feed shows you the newest videos from only the channels you're subscribed to” (YouTube Help: Find your way around YouTube (computer), read 14 October 2026), and the subscriptions help names one control on the channel list there: “You can go to a list of your channels by tapping All, and filter your results using the drop-down arrow at the top” (YouTube Help: Subscribe to YouTube channels, read 14 October 2026). That page describes no grouping or alternative view of the feed. If yours looks empty, the feed has its own checklist.

A different arrangement of those uploads is where Adinand Channel Sorter can help, within clear limits. You make your own tags and label the channels you follow, and on iPhone you can open a tag and switch to Latest videos to see the newest uploads from only that tag's channels, newest first; tapping one opens it in YouTube. It is per tag, it does not replace YouTube's feed, it sends no alerts, and the Latest videos view is on iPhone only. It is an independent tool, not affiliated with YouTube, and it cannot change how YouTube's own Home looks.