Account Switcher > Turn on Incognito. (Not the chrome incognito, but YouTube incognito)

IIRC i stopped using this because it takes way too long to toggle on/off and another crucial mistake they make is that YouTube acts like its chrome incognito where you want full privacy and an anonymous browsing experience, I do not want that, I still want to be able to see my own history like my last few search bar queries, I just dont want NEW entries added when in incognito mode. essentially i want read only mode

You can easily and quickly turn off watch on mobile. Don't remember if it's a hassle in the browser.

IME this turns off the premium benefits, stupidly

Oh that's weird

I would love something like what Spotify has - private listening. In the meantime, I just go into the YouTube history and remove anything that I don't want to pollute my recommendations. Turning off search history entirely also is good.

You can remove videos from your watch history and in my experience that does have an impact on the recommendations as it's not factored in anymore

Right, but that's annoying and you gotta remember. Something easier would be nice.

YES. I've been wanting this for years. I want a switch that signals to the analytic/algorithm system that I am consuming this content either...

A) sincerely, trustfully, optimistically, etc.

...or...

B) critically, skeptically, experimentally, observationally, etc.

If you create a new profile and switch to it it keeps your Premium benefits with its own watch history. I do this for communal watching on the living room TV.

Just delete it from watch history when your done, is what I do.

I just have a different tab with the history page open to pause / resume history you don't even need to refresh the page you use to play videos