How to Change Your Advanced Settings on YouTube

Building a YouTube channel is no easy task and requires you to commit yourself to building up an audience, engaging with that audience, and producing new content. While creating a channel is relatively easy, sometimes you can easily overlook some of the more basic things like going in and adjusting YouTube’s Advanced Settings.

For content creators, you might already be familiar with these, but if you’re just getting started on YouTube, this is a pretty helpful set of options to make your channel better. 

Let’s dive in!

What are YouTube Advanced Settings? 

The joke answer might be that they are settings within YouTube that are more advanced. The real answer is that these are settings that enable creators and YouTubers to make important adjustments to their channels for things like determining if your YouTube page is okay for kids. There are also a couple of settings around whether you want to disable inappropriate language that could appear within your auto-captions as well as disable interest-based ads. While not the most important settings you can tweak within your channel, they are important settings nonetheless. 

Accessing YouTube Advanced Settings via Desktop

The easiest and likely most common way to access YouTube’s Advanced Settings is through the desktop. It’s important to note that there are two sets of Advanced Settings for YouTube on the desktop, though

Step 1: Go to YouTube.com

Start by going to YouTube.com and then clicking on your profile picture in the upper right-hand corner until the drop-down menu appears. 

Step 2: Look for the Settings Icon

Within the drop-down menu, look toward the bottom and click on Settings next to the gear icon. 

Step 3: Locate Advanced Settings

As soon as you are taken to the Settings options, the bottom option on the left side of your screen is labeled Advanced Settings. Within this set of Advanced Settings, you can locate and copy your channel’s User ID and Channel ID among a few other options, such as:

• User ID
• Channel ID
• Default channel – you can use this setting to make this channel (the one you are currently signed into) the default whenever you sign into YouTube with your Gmail account. 
• Move channel – use this option to move your channel into a brand account which is great for creators starting their own channels as that is now their “brand.”
• Delete channel – this is pretty obvious but you can delete your existing YouTube channel without impacting the rest of your Google Account. 

Creator Advanced Settings

Accessing the more detailed advanced settings for creators starts off the same as it does for general users. 

Step 1: Go to YouTube 

Begin by going to YouTube.com and then clicking on your profile image at the top left corner until the drop-down menu appears. 

Step 2: Click on YouTube Studio

When the menu appears, click on YouTube Studio and wait for the Channel dashboard to open. This is a more advanced set of general options that can be accessed by anyone with a YouTube channel. 

Sep 3: Locate Settings and Find Pop-Up Window

Look at the very bottom left of the screen for another Settings option and click on it so it opens a pop-up window. 

Step 4: Find the Advanced Settings Label

The second option from the top is labeled Channel. Click on it so it opens up a window on the right side of the pop-up menu and find Advanced Settings in the middle of the screen. Now that you are at the more detailed set of Advanced settings, you have quite a few options available as a YouTube creator. 

Audience

This option allows you to determine whether or not your channel is safe for kids and you can choose from one of three settings.  

• The first option is the one you should select if the content you are uploading is safe for kids to watch. 
• The second option is the one you should select if you feel the content you are uploading is not safe for kids. 
• The third option is the box you wish to check if you want to have the option of making either of the above determinations for each video prior to uploading. That means you can choose one video that is safe for kids and the next one that is not. 

Google Ads 

Check this option if you want to run your own ads based on how viewers are interacting with your videos. Enabling this option will provide creators with the ability to link their Google Ads account to their organic view metrics and also remarket to viewers who have previously interacted with and viewed content on your channel. 

Automatic Captions

With this setting, you can check a box that disables inappropriate words from showing up when you use auto-captioning for your videos. 

Disable Interest-Based Ads

If you check this box, YouTube will disable the ability to show personalized ads on your YouTube channel that might appear to your views, habits, or interest. There’s a warning with this setting that by enabling this feature, you are potentially decreasing the amount of revenue you can earn. Consider this a warning that if you disable this feature, you can negatively impact the amount of revenue your channel earns, so that’s a big consideration prior to disabling. 

Clips

Checking this box allows your viewers or another channel creator to clip your content for needs in their own content. This is good for users to take anywhere from 5 to 60-second clips of your videos and share them through email, text message, or social media. 

Other Settings 

This is a shortcut that takes you to the other set of more generalized Advanced Settings written above. 

Remove YouTube Content 

A pretty obvious name for a pretty obvious purpose, but this setting takes you to another screen where you can remove specific content from your YouTube channel. 

Once you have made any changes to any of the options here, make sure to click on SAVE and then close the window and return to the main Channel dashboard or back to YouTube.com. Unfortunately, you cannot access these Advanced Settings via mobile either through the Android or iOS YouTube app or the separate YouTube Studio creator app. 

What are the Benefits of Switching on Advanced Settings? 

Good content creation is the ultimate way to succeed on YouTube but there are also some other critical strategies, like some of the Advanced Settings that will help you grow. 

Monetization

There’s a definite possibility that your monetization can be adversely impacted when you disable things like interest-based ads. Ads are the lifeblood of YouTube revenue aside from sponsored content, so making sure you are doing everything you can to allow interest-based ads or linking your Google Ads account will play a hefty role in future revenue potential. 

Promotion

Enabling “Clips” and allowing viewers to share your content is a fantastic way to bring new viewers to your content and hopefully subscribe to your channel. Subscribers mean more views, more views mean more ads, and more ads mean more revenue and future prospects of channel growth.

With an average of 2,500 new videos or 500 hours of new videos being uploaded to YouTube every minute, standing out is harder than ever, so as much self-promotion as you can provide is going to prove helpful. 

Safety

Having the ability to disable auto-captions for inappropriate language or choose whether your videos are friendly for children can go a long way to establishing your channel as safe. That’s true not just for viewers but advertisers and brands who might be hesitant to sponsor you if you are trying to market inappropriate content toward children or using inappropriate language within your captions. 

Final Thoughts

Knowing how to adjust Advanced settings can give a creator vastly more control over how they are able to operate their channel. Of course, you also want to make sure you know the impacts of enabling or disabling certain features like interest-based ads or auto-captions. Any of these changes can have a quick impact on your channel growth, so think carefully before making any big moves.

Check out this video from Nick Nimmin for additional YouTube settings that can help you grow your channel.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©photobyphotoboy/Shutterstock.com.