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Hide YouTube "Members only" Videos with a Simple Userscript

Guide•15 November 2025

YouTube has been promoting more and more videos that you can't actually play unless you're a member, leaving your feed cluttered with items you can't watch right away: "Members only" and "Members first" videos. Just like the increasing number of annoying ads, they consume precious space in your feed, subscriptions, recommendations and search results, making it harder to find content you can play now.

To combat this, I've built a tiny userscript to solve exactly this problem. It removes those items from your view automatically and keeps doing it as you interact with the page (e.g. scrolling).

Check it out on GitHub:

What it does

  • Hides "Members only" and "Members first" videos from:
    • Homepage
    • Search results
    • Subscriptions feed
    • Channel's Videos tab
    • Related/suggested videos on the watch page sidebar
  • Works with YouTube's single-page navigation (no full reloads required)
  • Handles both badge-based labels and the newer yt-badge-view-model text
  • Lightweight, no external dependencies, no tracking, no network calls: it just works in your browser

In practice: the script watches for the membership badges YouTube overlays on video cards and removes the entire card from the page, keeping your feed clean and relevant with videos you can actually watch.

Why you might want this

  • Stop seeing videos you can't watch without joining and becoming a member first
  • Find watchable content faster in more and more ads and shorts infested feeds
  • Remove visual clutter with no UI changes or performance compromises

This isn't about blocking or shaming creators or memberships directly. It's about reducing unnecessary friction (caused by YouTube) for viewers who prefer to browse content they can play immediately.

How to install it

You have two easy options. Both will keep the script updated if you install from the raw URL.

  1. Install Tampermonkey
  2. Open the GitHub repo
  3. Click the hide-members-videos.user.js file to view it, then click on the Raw button and copy the URL, which should be: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/umbertoragone/youtube-hide-members-videos/refs/heads/main/hide-members-videos.user.js.
  4. In Tampermonkey paste the URL. It will prompt you to install. Confirm and enable.
  5. Refresh YouTube.

Option 2: AdGuard

  1. Open AdGuard settings
  2. Go to the Extensions tab
  3. Click the + on the bottom left and add userscript by URL:
  4. Apply and refresh YouTube.

Notes on compatibility

  • Desktop browsers: Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari (via Tampermonkey or AdGuard)
  • By installing the script using the URL, you always get the latest updated version.
  • Works across homepage, channels, subscriptions, and watch pages
  • The script is resilient to YouTube's dynamic, single-page updates
  • If YouTube changes its internal markup (they often do), the repo will quickly try to ship fixes

If you notice member-only items slipping through, open an issue on GitHub with a short HTML snippet of the badge area (that speeds up fixes significantly) and I'll try to patch it as soon as possible.

Conclusion

This small userscript made my YouTube browsing and usage much cleaner and declutteres, by removing videos you can't watch unless you become a member of those channels. If this improved your YouTube experience, consider starring the repository on GitHub so others can find it. Contributions and issue reports are welcome!