If you don’t want people to see your YouTube videos anymore, you can hide your channel and your content. Or you can choose to permanently delete it. Here are step-by-step instructions on how to temporarily or permanently deactivate your channel.
How to delete your YouTube channel
If you chose to permanently delete your YouTube account, you will lose your subscribers and all your content (videos, comments, playlists, messages, history). Follow these steps to delete your channel (which won’t delete your YouTube account!):
- Deleting your channel is only possible on desktop, so open YouTube Studio on your computer and log in.
- If you don’t have the URL to YouTube Studio, you can also simply log in to YouTube and open your channel. In the upper right corner, click on your small profile picture. Then select “YouTube Studio” from the dropdown menu.
- On the new page, there is a menu on the left side of the screen. At the bottom of that list, click “Settings”.
- In the pop-up window, click “Channel” and then “Advanced settings”.
- Scroll down. At the bottom, click “Remove YouTube Content”. Enter your sign-in details, if needed.
- Click “I want to permanently delete my content”, then check the boxes to confirm that you want to delete the channel.
- Click “Delete my content”.
- Your channel’s URL and name will no longer be visible or searchable. But it may take some time until everything is deleted (so you might still see thumbnails of your videos online, for a short period of time).
How to hide your YouTube channel
Maybe you want to remove your contents for a while, but make them visible again after a certain period of time. In this case, you can hide your YouTube channel instead of deleting it. Bear in mind that your comments and replies will be deleted, not hidden. Your videos, likes, subscriptions and subscribers, as well as the channel name will be made private. They will be visible again if you re-enable your channel.
- Open YouTube Studio on your computer (hiding your channel is not possible on mobile) and log in.
- Alternatively, you can also log in to YouTube, go to your channel and then click on your small profile picture in the upper right corner. Then select “YouTube Studio” from the dropdown menu.
- In the menu on the left side of the screen, click “Settings”.
- A new window will pop up. Click “Channel” and then “Advanced settings”.
- Scroll down until you see three options at the bottom of the screen. Click “Remove YouTube Content”.
- If needed, enter your sing-in details again.
- Click “I want to hide my content” and check the boxes to confirm.
- Click “Hide my channel”.
