65

Is there a setting or YouTube option, or maybe even a browser plugin, that allows you to disable video annotations for good?

I want to be able to switch them off permanently.

| improve this question | |
  • Just to add, the selected answer below does work but only temporarily. It's possibly a bug with YouTube (which I have reported) but it has been an issue for a while so I don't know when/if it will be fixed. – DisgruntledGoat Nov 7 '11 at 20:52
48

The option is found in the Account Playback settings:

  1. Click your profile picture and then YouTube settings
  2. Click Playback
  3. De-select Show annotations on videos
  4. Click Save
| improve this answer | |
  • 6
    Here's the link: youtube.com/account_playback – Tim Büthe Oct 21 '13 at 21:01
  • 4
    Despite having this box unchecked, YouTube still seems to happily show all the annotations by default. I've had them disabled for years, and some YouTube update in the past year seems to have caused it to be ignored. – Jason C May 25 '14 at 7:15
  • Doesn't work... – Your Majesty May 25 '14 at 21:41
  • 1
    It works for me. – NoNameProvided Sep 11 '15 at 13:47
  • 1
    You should make it clear that this is NOT actually permanent. Annotations ALWAYS get turned back on some time later, no matter how many times you "permanently" turn them off in settings. – DisgruntledGoat Jun 11 '16 at 15:36
14

If you're like me and you don't want to help Google collect even more personal information about you by creating an account, you can still disable these annotations using an ad blocking extension that supports Adblock Plus-compatible filters and the following rule :

||youtube.com/annotations_
| improve this answer | |
  • if I could +1 you 1000 times, i would!! – hassan789 May 24 '15 at 3:48
  • This is the only thing that works for me now – Raystafarian Jun 6 '16 at 9:00
  • This works without needing to log in to YouTube, wonderful! – Esteis Sep 28 '16 at 11:55
  • For me, the "account playback settings" method worked even on embedded videos on 3rd party websites in Safari, but stopped working on other sites than youtube.com when I switched to Chrome. This took care of that. – Andreas Sep 27 '18 at 13:13
  • This might be out of date. Filter lists like "Youtube: Other Annoyances" - easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/yt_annoyances_other.txt - are updated regularly. See for instance the list of filter lists here: github.com/uBlock-LLC/uBlock/wiki/… – Joshua Goldberg Apr 11 at 20:32

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.