The biggest challenge with learning a language is staying consistent. With textbooks or apps, motivation can fade fast. Youtube is different because there's such a huge variety of content that you can find stuff you're genuinely interested in. At some point you're not really studying anymore, you're just watching videos you enjoy, except they happen to be in French. That's when you can make real progress over the long term and level up.

The problem is, your Youtube algorithm is trained on years of your native language habits. It won't suddenly start recommending French content just because you want it to. So most people end up manually searching for videos every time, which gets old quickly.

Here's a simple setup that fixes that and turns Youtube into a proper immersion tool.

1. Create a separate Youtube channel just for French

Create a new channel rather than a new account. That way if you have Youtube Premium you don't need a second subscription. Here's a guide made by Refold that walks you through the setup.

2. Change two settings

Once your channel is created, change the location to France and the account language to French. This gives Youtube the right signals from the start.

3. Train your algorithm

Search for topics you already enjoy, just enter keywords in French. When a video in your native language sneaks in, click the three dots and hit "Not Interested." After a few days your feed will start looking very different.

Once you've done this, your feed fills up with content you actually want to watch. You open Youtube, everything is in French, and you just pick something that looks interesting. It becomes part of your routine without any effort.

That's it.

Good to know

If you don't have the level yet to watch Youtube in French, I built a simple tool that adapts French subtitles to your level, words you don't know get translated directly in the subtitles, so you can understand everything and learn vocabulary on the go.