The page plays your video in YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player, the same one YouTube offers websites in its Share → Embed dialog. It loads from youtube-nocookie.com instead of youtube.com, and it shows that one video with nothing around it.

Updated

  • Watch links: youtube.com/watch?v=…, including m.youtube.com links copied on a phone.
  • Share links: youtu.be/…, as YouTube’s Share button copies them.
  • Shorts and live streams: youtube.com/shorts/… and youtube.com/live/…. Shorts play in the standard wide player.
  • Embed links: youtube.com/embed/… and youtube-nocookie.com/embed/….
  • A video ID: the 11 characters after v= in a watch link.

A time in the link, such as t=90, t=90s, or t=1m30s, starts the video at that second. A link to a video in a playlist plays that one video.

What privacy-enhanced mode does

YouTube Help describes one promise: views in privacy-enhanced mode aren’t used to personalize your YouTube experience, inside the embedded player or later on YouTube itself. If YouTube shows an ad, it’s non-personalized, and the view isn’t used to personalize ads you see elsewhere.

In practice, a video you watch here doesn’t shape your YouTube home page or your recommendations. The player isn’t signed in to your YouTube account, so the video doesn’t appear in your watch history either.

What it doesn’t do

  • It isn’t an ad blocker. YouTube may still show ads in the player. This page doesn’t remove or change them.
  • It doesn’t make you anonymous. Your browser still connects to YouTube and Google, which see your IP address and the video you play. When we tested the player in Chrome, it set no cookies before or after playing, but it saved data in the browser’s local storage and IndexedDB as soon as it loaded. YouTube may store more once you play.
  • It doesn’t hide everything after the video. When a video ends, YouTube suggests more videos from the same channel. The page has no sidebar or comments, and nothing from other channels plays next.
  • It ends when you leave the player. Selecting the video title, the YouTube logo, or Watch on YouTube opens youtube.com, where YouTube’s usual cookies and history apply.

Why a video won’t play here

  • The owner turned off embedding. The player says playback on other websites is disabled. Use Watch on YouTube under the player.
  • It’s age-restricted. YouTube sends age-restricted videos back to youtube.com, where you sign in to confirm your age.
  • It’s private, removed, or for channel members only. The player says the video is unavailable.
  • The player shows error 153. YouTube refuses to play embeds that don’t say which site they’re on. A browser setting or extension that hides the referrer causes it, so allow referrers for retubeapp.com.

Embed a YouTube video without cookies

YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode is the closest thing to a cookie-free embed. It loads from youtube-nocookie.com, and in our tests in Chrome it set no cookies before or after playing. To get the code, tick Enable privacy-enhanced mode under Share → Embed on YouTube, or play a video here and copy it from Cookie-free embed code below the player.

The embed isn’t storage-free, though. The same tests found it writing to local storage and IndexedDB as soon as the page loaded, before anyone pressed play. EU privacy rules cover that kind of storage as well as cookies, so switching to youtube-nocookie.com doesn’t by itself remove the need for consent.

Watching more than one video

This page plays one video at a time on purpose. To keep the rest of YouTube calmer, Retube, our free Chrome extension, groups your subscriptions into feeds inside YouTube, such as Cooking, Science, or Learning. You open a feed and see only the channels in it.

To set that up by hand or with Retube, read how to organize YouTube subscriptions.