A recent significant feature that YouTube has brought in to their platform is the “highlighted comment” system. If you have ever clicked on a YouTube notification and seen one comment stand out from the rest, that’s it. But a lot of people want to know: Can I manually unhighlight a comment or reply on YouTube? In this guide, we’ll talk about what this all means and how you can remove the “highlighted comment” or “highlighted reply” tag from a YouTube comment.
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Page Contents
What is a highlighted comment or reply?
Before we talk about how to remove a highlighted comment or reply on YouTube, it’s good to know what a highlighted comment is and how it’s different from other comments.
A highlighted comment or reply on YouTube is a comment that you’ve been directed to from an external source, such as:
- A notification indicating a reply to your comment.
- A shared link from someone else pointing you directly to a specific comment.
This system helps users by making navigation easier. Instead of scrolling through many comments to find the one you’ve been notified about, YouTube takes you directly to it.
A pinned comment is one that the video’s uploader has chosen to show at the top of their video’s comment section. This comment has a small pin icon and stays at the top, visible to everyone until the creator decides to unpin it or pin a different one.
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Creator’s choice: Pinned and Top comments
YouTube creators have a lot of control over their video’s comments section. Their choices, along with YouTube’s algorithms, decide which comments get seen first. It’s important to know how different comment types work together.
Pinned comments
Pinned comments are ones that the video’s creator has put at the top of the comments section. Here’s what you should know:
- Pinned comments are easy to see for anyone looking at the comments.
- Creators pin comments to share important news, updates, or to highlight feedback they think is valuable.
- There can only be one pinned comment at a time. Putting up a new one will replace the old one.
Even if a comment is highlighted for you, the pinned comment will always be at the top. The highlighted comment will appear right after the pinned one, but above the top comments.
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Top comments
The top comments section shows comments that have gotten a lot of likes or replies. This is driven by an algorithm that tries to show comments that are most relevant or engaging. Here’s how they relate to highlighted comments:
- Both types of comments make the viewer’s experience better, but top comments come from community engagement, while highlighted comments are about your own interactions.
- The list of top comments can change as new comments become popular. Highlighted comments stay the same for you until you move away or get a new notification.
How to unhighlight a comment on YouTube
Some people think you can’t “unhighlight” a comment or reply on YouTube, but there is a simple way to do it. Here’s how:
- Open the video where the comment is highlighted.
- Check the web address in your browser’s address bar.
- Find any part that starts with
&, like a timestamp at the end of the URL (e.g.,&t=2m30swhich shows the 2 minutes and 30 seconds mark). - Take out any of these
&parts from the URL.
- Press Enter.
- Now, just refresh your page. You can do this by hitting the refresh button on your browser or pressing F5 on your keyboard.
After doing this, the comment won’t be highlighted for you anymore. But remember, this doesn’t take the highlight off for others who come to the video using a link with a timestamp.
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Why unhighlighting a comment is mostly pointless
At first, the highlighted comment feature might seem like it gets in the way or is not needed. Some users might find it a bit annoying and try to get rid of the highlight. But that might not really help and in most cases pointless, because:
- The highlighting is just a temporary mark, kind of like a sign. Once you leave the video or close the tab, and then come back, that comment won’t be highlighted anymore (unless you’re following the same notification link).
- Highlighted comments are made just for you based on what you do or the notifications you get. So, it’s not a highlight that everyone else sees. This means only you see that comment highlighted, depending on your actions or notifications.
Also, the “highlighted comment” or “highlighted reply” tag is YouTube’s way of making it easier for you to get to the part of the conversation that involves you or might interest you. Just know that the highlighted comments are different from the pinned ones.
Too long; didn’t read
YouTube’s highlighted comment system, even though it can be confusing at times, is a little feature designed to make it easier for you to get around and stay engaged. While you can’t directly unhighlight a comment on YouTube, refreshing the page or changing the URL can remove the “highlighted comment” or “highlighted reply” tag from a comment or reply. However, this action is often not very useful because the main point of the feature is to guide you, not to keep a permanent mark.
As YouTube keeps changing, who knows what new features will come up? But for now, if you see a highlighted comment, it’s there to help you find your way through the big world of YouTube chats more easily.
