How to temporarily hide or permanently delete your YouTube account, and erase any trace of yourself from the site

There are plenty of reasons to want to delete a YouTube account.

Maybe you no longer want to follow any of the YouTubers you used to love, and it's time to clean house and start over with the platform. Or maybe YouTube is taking too much of your time away from you, and you just need to break away once and for all.

No matter why you want to call it quits with YouTube, the good news is that it's easy to delete a YouTube account.

Just know that once you delete your YouTube account, not only will all of your videos, playlists, and subscriptions disappear, but so will your comments and likes, messages, and every other trace of your YouTube account.

So consider just hiding your content instead, which is a reversible move that will nonetheless scrub much of your presence off the site. Most of the steps to delete or hide a YouTube account are the same, so let's get to it.

How to delete (or hide) your YouTube account

1. Go to YouTube on your desktop browser and make sure you are signed in.

2. Click your account icon (which will be an image, or a circle with a letter in it if you haven't uploaded an avatar) at the top right corner of the screen

3. In the dropdown menu, click "Settings."

Open the YouTube Settings menu. Steven John/Business Insider

4. On the next page, click "Advanced settings" at the bottom of the menu on the left.

Navigate to your Advanced settings. Steven John/Business Insider

5. Scroll down on the next page and click "DELETE CHANNEL."

Click the "Delete Account" button. Steven John/Business Insider

6. Verify your password, then decide if you simply want to hide your content; if so click "I want to hide my content" and check both boxes, then hit "HIDE MY CONTENT" in the blue box.

Choose whether you'd like to hide your account, or go ahead with deleting it. Steven John/Business Insider

7. To delete your account, click "I want to permanently delete my content" and then check the box, then finish the deed by hitting the "DELETE MY CONTENT" box.

Confirm that you want to delete your account. Steven John/Business Insider