How to use FeedTamer
FeedTamer adds nothing to YouTube's pages. Every control is in Settings.
What you will see in Settings
Settings opens once after installation, and the FeedTamer icon on the toolbar opens it again later. A slim header holds the Filtering enabled switch and the language choice. Three tabs hold the rest: Your rules, YouTube, and Account and data.
Block or Allow
The Your rules tab has the choice of how FeedTamer filters. Block hides only what you add and leaves everything else. Allow shows only what you add and hides everything else. Allow comes with the subscription or the free trial.
Subjects
Subject chips hide a ready-made subject, such as politics or gambling, with one tap. A second tap turns the subject off. Subjects come with the subscription.
Words and channels
One box hides a word or a channel. A word hides every title that contains it, and an @handle or a channel link hides that channel's videos. Each rule in the list below the box shows how many videos it has hidden. Word and channel hiding is part of the free version.
A channel rule hides that channel's videos on the pages FeedTamer filters. It does not block the creator's account or change your YouTube account preferences. A blocked video or channel opened from a link returns you to the YouTube home page. Searches are never redirected: matching results are hidden on the results page.
YouTube switches
The YouTube switches are Hide Shorts, home page recommendations, related videos next to the player, suggestions when a video ends, live streams, watched videos, Mixes, Playlists and titles that shout. Hide Shorts is free, and the other switches come with the subscription. The recommendation, Mixes and Playlists switches apply to whole sections, so a Show rule does not bring a hidden section back.
More options and the other tabs
More options, in Your rules, has the detailed rule form, where Channel or group of words offers Show rules and groups of similar terms. The YouTube tab has the switches and the options behind them, such as minimum length and the limit per channel, plus the feed sections and the playback options. Account and data has the plan, the license key field, the manual cloud backup, export and import, and the theme.
Test your rules
Test your rules takes a video title and, if you add them, a channel, a description, a length, how much of the video was watched and whether it is live. Test saved rules then shows whether your saved settings would hide that video, which mode applied and which rule decided it.
Edits you have not saved are not included, and nothing you enter is saved or sent. The result covers the details you enter, not YouTube itself.
Autoplay and Watch only
Disable autoplay and Watch only are off until you turn them on. Disable autoplay turns off YouTube's autoplay toggle. Watch only hides engagement controls such as subscribe, like, share, membership, comments and live chat, and turns autoplay off. Disable autoplay and Watch only come with the subscription or the trial.
Backup, export and license key
To activate a plan, enter the license key or the Paddle order ID from your receipt in the license key field and select Activate. Remove from this browser removes the license key from this browser and does not cancel a subscription or stop billing.
Save a copy stores your settings and rules on the FeedTamer server and replaces the copy saved before. Restore copy replaces this browser's settings with that copy. Saving and restoring are manual, and a copy never syncs on its own. Saving a copy needs a paid plan.
Export file downloads your saved settings as a JSON file, with or without a plan. Import file replaces the current settings with the contents of a file, but only when the whole file passes the check; a file that fails changes nothing.
Reset to defaults erases every rule and asks for a second click to confirm. Import and Reset need the trial or a subscription.
Where filtering works
Install FeedTamer in a desktop browser compatible with Chrome Web Store. It filters supported YouTube pages in that browser, including feeds and search results. It does not filter the YouTube phone or TV apps. YouTube Premium is not required.
Filtering depends on the information available on the page. A word rule cannot identify an unmentioned subject. YouTube changes can affect coverage, so check the result with your own rules.
Your settings and privacy
Filtering happens in your browser. FeedTamer does not upload your viewing history to classify your feed. Trial and subscription checks connect to FeedTamer services.
Subscribers can save a manual cloud backup of their settings and restore it on another installation. The backup does not sync devices automatically. Anyone can export a local copy from Settings.
Account and data shows the trial or subscription status. Without a plan, word and channel hiding and Hide Shorts keep working, and the other features pause with their settings saved.