How do you make your YouTube subscriptions private?

Last reviewed: October 7, 2026 · Markdown version

Check before you change anything: private is where YouTube starts. Its privacy page says you can make the channels you follow private or public, and that “By default, all settings are set to private” (YouTube Help: Change your subscription privacy settings, read 7 October 2026). So if your list is visible to other people, someone switched it to public at some point, and one switch puts it back.

The switch, on a computer

YouTube's steps (YouTube Help: Change your subscription privacy settings, read 7 October 2026):

Sign in to YouTube on a computer.
Click your profile picture in the top right.
Click Settings.
In the menu on the left, choose Privacy.
Turn Keep all my subscriptions private on.

Turning the same switch off makes the list public.

On a phone

The privacy page gives computer steps only. It describes no route in the Android or iPhone app; we requested its Android, iPhone and computer versions and all three carry the same text (YouTube Help: Change your subscription privacy settings, read 7 October 2026).

The documented way round it is a browser page. YouTube's Your Data in YouTube page, reached through your profile picture, lists a “Subscriptions privacy setting” among the things you can manage there, and the help says the page is “currently only available on desktop and mobile web” — so a phone's browser counts (YouTube Help: Your Data in YouTube, read 7 October 2026).

What each setting shows other people

Both descriptions are YouTube's (YouTube Help: Change your subscription privacy settings, read 7 October 2026):

Public. “Your subscriptions are listed on your channel homepage,” and your account appears in the Subscribers List of every channel you follow.
Private. Nobody else can see which channels you follow, and your account stays out of those channels' Subscribers Lists even though you are subscribed.

There is one documented crack in private. Join a subscriber-only live chat, or comment on a video or Short where comments are limited to subscribers and members, and other viewers can “publicly see” that you subscribe to that channel (same page). Private settings do not cover that moment.

The setting is about other people only. It does not change what you see; a list that will not load for you is a separate problem.

What the page leaves open

Three things people ask that the privacy page does not answer (YouTube Help: Change your subscription privacy settings, read 7 October 2026):

The subscriber count. It says a private subscriber is left out of a channel's Subscribers List; it does not say whether that subscriber still counts in the channel's number.
Several channels on one account. It describes a single switch for the account you are signed in with and does not say whether each of your channels needs its own.
The phone apps. As above, no in-app steps.

We are leaving all three as open questions rather than guessing.

A heavier option you probably do not want

Hiding your whole channel also makes its subscriptions private: YouTube says “Hiding your channel will make channel name, videos, likes, subscriptions, and subscribers private” (YouTube Help: Delete or hide your YouTube channel, read 7 October 2026). It takes your videos and likes with it, and the help warns view counts can take up to a week to recover after you bring the channel back. For keeping a list of channels to yourself, the single switch above does the job.