A YouTube channel without showing your face? That seems highly unlikely at first thought, but it’s possible.
Just like Khaby Lame makes money as a creator without saying a single word, many YouTubers earn big bucks without sitting and talking in front of a camera — and you can do it, too.
In this article, we’ll share 20 YouTube channel video ideas you can try out without showing your face, plus examples of creators who have pulled these off.
First, let’s quickly discuss why a creator might consider a faceless YouTube channel.
Skip ahead:
- Why start a YouTube channel without showing your face?
- Our top 20 faceless YouTube channel ideas + real-life examples
- When it’s not right to create a faceless video
- Come up with a creative name for your YouTube channel
- YouTube channel ideas without showing your face FAQs
Why start a YouTube channel without showing your face?
Here are four reasons creators opt for faceless YouTube channels instead of the popular face-to-face option.
They are camera shy
Some creators aren’t confident enough to sit in front of a camera and talk to their audience.
They might rehearse their YouTube script for countless hours. But, once they get in front of the camera, they shiver, experience cold sweats and sweaty palms, and make awkward gestures.
“ But practice makes perfect. The best way to build your confidence is to put out YouTuber videos until it doesn’t feel awkward anymore.”
While that’s true, if every video recording session feels like you’re walking on nails barefooted, it’s not worth the torture.
Consider having a faceless channel first. Then, as you build your confidence, you can do a face reveal and introduce yourself to your audience.
They want their privacy
One of the biggest advantages of finding YouTube channel ideas without showing your face is the privacy it grants you.
The minute you publish your first “Welcome to my YouTube channel,” you’re potentially exposed to millions of people on the Internet. Suddenly, strangers who do not know the first thing about you now have an opinion about your life and ideas. It can be very uncomfortable.
Unfortunately, being a content creator can lead to unwanted attention and harassment. People aren’t always kind online, and the YouTube comments section can often turn into a battleground with personal comments directed at creators.
It even spills over to other social media platforms. Some people go out of their way to leave mean comments on your Facebook, Twitter (X), and TikTok accounts.
When you have a faceless YouTube channel, you can separate your digital identity from your authentic self. Any mean comments people make about your YouTube content won’t spill over to the rest of your social accounts.
Anonymity
If you’re moonlighting as a YouTuber, it makes sense to have a faceless YouTube channel.
While many companies are open to and even encourage their employees to be creators, some others haven’t caught up with the times. They feel like anything you do outside work reduces your 9-5 productivity.
If you work for the latter, keep your boss, co-workers, and even friends out of the loop when you’re setting up your YouTube channel so you don’t run into any conflicting interests. Then, when you get consistent traction over a period, have a conversation with your manager about what you are building.
If your boss sees firsthand what you’ve built while meeting your KPIs, they might be more willing to relax their restrictions.
Reach a wider audience
Whether you’re using animations, screen recordings, or video tutorials, YouTube channel ideas without showing your face can also help you reach a wider audience by giving viewers a more focused experience – rather than including too much face time, you can concentrate on the facts and create valuable content.
Many videos are actually more helpful to your audience if they can watch exactly what you’re doing rather than what you look like while you’re doing it! This is where hands-on videos are really useful, especially for how-to guides and tutorials.
Our top 20 faceless YouTube channel ideas + real-life examples
If you’re not showing your face on your YouTube channel, you’ll need to do something else to capture your audience’s attention. That said, here are twenty simple but creative ideas you can explore for your faceless YouTube channel.
Skip ahead:
- Tutorials and how-to videos
- Animation videos
- Illustrations
- Whiteboard videos
- Screen recordings
- Commentary videos
- Podcasts and audio-only videos
- Slideshow videos
- Vtuber videos
- AI videos
- Documentary videos
- Cooking and food videos
- Product reviews and unboxing videos
- Compilation videos
- Gameplay videos
- ASMR videos
- Virtual tours
- Quotes and Inspirational videos
- DIY videos
- Masked videos
Tutorials represent the widest range of YouTube channel ideas without showing your face, covering a huge number of different topics and video styles.
YouTube is one of the most popular search engines in the world and a big portion of that traffic is people searching how to do something – be it learning a musical instrument, creating beautiful nail art or fixing a problem with their car.
Tutorials are all about teaching your audience something new, and this makes them a great option for creators looking for YouTube channel ideas without showing your face. For most tutorials, your audience doesn’t need to see your face; they just need to see what you’re doing.
For example, if you’re fixing a nightmare plumbing problem, your audience wants to see what you’re doing with your hands, including how you’re using the tools and which pipes or valves you’re operating – no face needed!
Other popular tutorial topics include:
- Life hacks
- Beauty and fashion
- Design
- Music
- Art and crafting
- DIY
- Home renovations
- Technology
Sliday’s YouTube channel is a great example here. It contains walkthrough videos showing how the audience can complete different tasks in Figma. Since there’s no narrator or voice over, each step is shown for a few seconds first before the demonstration of how it works. This helps the audience follow through smoothly.
Pro tip: Include upbeat music to help your audience focus on the content throughout the video.
If you want to create interesting, addictive YouTube content for your audience, animated videos are a brilliant choice.
Animation makes it easy to explain complex information in a bite-sized format that grabs your audience’s attention and helps them learn something new.
One of the top animated education channels on YouTube is Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell, which has racked up a whopping 21.3 million subscribers — all without showing the creator’s face.
This hugely popular channel uses minimalist animated content to educate and engage its audience on everything from what dinosaurs actually looked like to how the immune system works. The animations make big topics simple and easy to absorb.
Pro tip: Combine creative storytelling with interesting visuals to keep your audience engaged.
Digital illustrations are another fun way to create YouTube content without showing your face. You can use illustrations simply to entertain or to explain ideas, depending on your YouTube channel idea.
While most illustration videos on YouTube feature moving animations, you can also create stop-motion illustration videos. Thanks to digital illustration tools like ProCreate, you can easily create illustrated YouTube videos if you have some drawing skills – and lots of patience!
For inspiration, check out Minute Physics for their straightforward illustrated videos, explaining physics topics and questions in a step-by-step way that anyone can understand. Created by Henry Reich in 2011, the channel has now grown to about 5.7 million subscribers thanks to its simple illustrations.
Pro tip: Embrace simplicity and pass your message in an easy-to-understand manner.
Another really useful YouTube channel idea without showing your face that’s ideal for content creators and educators is whiteboard videos.
Whiteboard videos utilize digital whiteboard and screen recording software to help educators illustrate different concepts. Whiteboard videos are a YouTube channel idea you can use to simplify complex information for your audience.
Whiteboard-based YouTube channel ideas without showing your face can include:
- Math videos
- Science
- Languages
- Art and illustration
- Business and economics
A great example of whiteboard videos that don’t show the creator’s face can be seen on the ExamSolutions channel by AirMaths. Many of their online video tutorials are explainer-style videos using a digital whiteboard. The tutor talks through concepts like math equations and scientific formulas while drawing step-by-step on a digital whiteboard.
This format helps students follow along and learn – and it’s easy to replicate for your own YouTube channel without showing your face.
Pro tip: Present the information slowly, like you’re chatting with a friend in the same room.
If you’ve ever watched an explainer video on YouTube, you’ve probably watched a screen recording video at some point.
Many YouTube channel ideas without showing your face use screen recording software – but screen recordings themselves can also be a really effective form of YouTube content in their own right.
Screen recording videos are especially useful if you’re creating how-to videos for technical topics, such as ‘how to log in to Thinkific’ and ‘how to use Google Docs’.
Many businesses use screen recording videos as explainers and onboarding videos for their products to help improve customer success and show off top features. Zoom is a great example of this style of video – check out the Zoom YouTube channel for inspiration and ideas.
Pro tip: Add intro and outro video clips to make your video more engaging.
Commentary channels on YouTube are diverse, covering everything from true crime to celebrity news and more. If you want to create YouTube videos without showing your face, commentary videos are well-suited to this anonymous style of content creation.
Iilluminaughtii is one of the most popular commentary channels on YouTube, racking up over 1.43 million subscribers with their video essays on corruption, crime and other exposés of corporations and individuals.
The videos feature a combination of simple animation, video clips, photographs and screenshots to illustrate each topic. Importantly, they never show the creator’s face, giving them much-needed anonymity when investigating shady figures.
Pro tip: Use the first-person narration technique to create a connection with your audience.
For creators, audio-only videos can be the best YouTube channel ideas without showing your face, especially if you have unique audio content you want to share with your audience.
Whether you’re an educator, a musician or a podcaster, this type of YouTube video lets you show off your audio content without distracting your audience with complex visuals. It also ensures you don’t waste time creating animations and other images that your viewers don’t really care about.
For an example of audio-only content, take a look at the Calm channel. Most of the Calm content features simple repeating videos of relaxing nature scenes, including waves, grass and rain – the most important thing is the audio content that guides listeners through different meditation and breathing exercises.
Pro tip: Limit visual distractions so that your audience can focus entirely on the audio.
For another straightforward YouTube channel idea without showing your face, you could try making slideshow videos.
Slideshow videos simply involve uploading a presentation and adding music or a voiceover audio file to go along with the slideshow. You can also create slideshow videos directly on YouTube by uploading images straight to the platform as 4K TV Wallpapers and Screensavers does here.
For content creators and educators, slideshow videos let you upload your webinars or masterclass content directly to YouTube, helping your audience access your content for longer and creating the opportunity for more people to watch and learn from your live streams.
This not only helps to extend the reach of your content, but it also gives you the chance to monetize your content on YouTube.
Pro tip: Use beautiful visuals and ensure that each slide transitions into the next one smoothly.
Originating from Japan, VTubers are ‘virtual YouTubers’ who use motion-capture or AR face-tracking to create videos with a digital avatar. VTubers often use anime-style characters for their digital personas, and they rarely show their real faces.
One of the most popular English-language VTubers is Gawr Gura from HoloLive, who is the first VTuber to reach 4 million subscribers on YouTube. If you want to get started with this ultra-popular YouTube channel idea without showing your face, take a look at her content to see how it’s done.
Pro tip: Use your visual elements, especially the avatars and their actions, to tell a compelling story.
Like VTuber videos, AI videos are also a great way to create a YouTube channel without showing your face. AI videos use software to create videos with AI avatars and voices.
You can create professional videos using a diverse range of AI avatars without needing to hire a film crew, actors and editors. For example, YouTuber, Jensen Tung, created an AI channel that hit 100,000 views in 30 days.
To try making your own AI videos, check out Elai.io. This user-friendly app lets you generate fully customizable videos in 40 languages with a real human presenter, using the text you already have in your course content.
With Elai, you can utilize your existing content and turn it into engaging videos for your YouTube channel, all without showing your face.
Pro tip: Experiment with creative prompts to shorten your creation time and effort.
Many documentary videos can also be used as YouTube channel ideas without showing your face.
Nature, travel, and science documentaries all rely heavily on filmed footage without an on-screen presenter. Think National Geographic with its stunning photography and informational videos.
While it won’t be suitable for everyone, if you have keen photography skills and a passion for capturing the world on camera, this could be the channel idea for you!
Pro tip: Record high-quality video footage and pictures and string them together in a way that tells a compelling narrative, even if you don’t use a voiceover.
Who doesn’t love a cooking video? Videos showing people what to eat and how to cook have become big businesses on YouTube, with channels ranging from simple food-related life hacks to deep dives into regional cuisines and complex cooking techniques.
If your expertise lies in food, nutrition or a related topic, this could be the perfect YouTube channel idea without showing your face.
Thanks to the popularity of this genre, there’s already a lot of competition on YouTube from big-name chefs like Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver and Martha Stewart. That means you need to think of an original concept that will grab your audience’s attention if you want to make your cooking channel a success.
Guga Foods is one example of a YouTube channel that’s successfully won millions of subscribers while rarely showing the creator’s face. Gustavo Tosta created Guga Foods to share meat-heavy recipes and inventive cooking experiments.
One of their most popular videos is their 60 days dry-aged brisket experiment, which has an impressive 5.8 million views. This video only shows the chefs’ hands on a countertop – but it gives the audience everything they want.
Pro tip: Sync your voiceover with the visual actions so that it’s easier for your audience to follow each step.
Another really popular YouTube channel idea without showing your face is product reviews. You don’t need to show your face to talk about a product that you love, or that’s been newly released.
Unboxing videos have also become really popular on YouTube, featuring the process of unwrapping or unboxing a new product step-by-step. Again, the focus of the video is on the product, not on you, so it’s a great YouTube channel idea without showing your face.
The two most popular types of unboxing videos are electronic products and children’s toys.
Take a look at FunToys Collector Disney Toys Review to see how you could use this YouTube channel idea to grow your audience. The channel’s host only shows her hands in her videos, keeping the camera directed at the products she’s reviewing.
Pro tip: Zoom the camera into your actions so the audience can item in the box clearly.
The home of the cute cat video, YouTube is well-known for its compilation videos. This YouTube channel idea without showing your face is great for racking up lots of views without you needing to create the content from scratch.
One of the top compilation channels is FailArmy, with over 16.1 million subscribers. This channel is all about putting the best or worst fails from around the world into compilation videos that regularly get millions of views.
Pro tip: Make the video clips flow smoothly into each other.
Another YouTube channel idea without showing your face is Gameplay videos. Gameplay videos are direct footage from a video game, usually with a voiceover designed to show gamers what it’s like to play a game and how to learn tricks.
Gaming videos are a very specific category of YouTube channel, and they’re not suited to everyone. But if you have a passion, interest or business that revolves around gaming, this could be the channel idea for you!
For inspiration, take a look at VanossGaming, which is now one of the top 20 YouTube Channels. Started by Evan Fong, VanossGaming has built up more than 25.7 million subscribers without Fong needing to show his face, though he does make guest appearances.
Pro tip: Have a co-host or invite a guest to your channel for interesting dialogue.
ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. It’s a type of video that emphasizes sensory sounds like the buzzes from a clipper during a haircut or even whispers and scratches happening in an environment. These are sounds that one might ordinarily ignore.
These sounds help stimulate a soothing and relaxing feeling in the audience. A good example is this oil pastel drawing video from Building Toys. There’s nothing distracting the viewers from the sounds of the drawing.
Pro tip: Use simple visuals to accompany your ASMR sounds.
Very few people can afford to travel around the world. But, thanks to virtual tours, they enjoy the beauty and landscape of different locations from the comfort of their homes.
Virtual tours allow you to take your viewers on a digital journey to various locations, landmarks, museums and unique destinations. It’s pretty straightforward to pull off if you’re already a travel creator. All you need to do is capture awe-amazing images and footage during your trip, string them together to tell an interesting narrative and upload to your YouTube channel.
See how Virtual Tours TV pulls this off.
Pro Tip: Figure out the story you want to tell with your video clips and images first before putting them together.
You can never go wrong with sharing words of wisdom from popular philosophers and successful entrepreneurs.
Turn these words of wisdom into text-on-canvas images and string them together to create a motivational video. Add inspirational background music for good measure. This is what Quotes used to earn nearly 1.2 million YouTube subscribers.
Pro Tip: Ensure that your soundtrack and visuals match the tone and mood of the quotes you’re sharing.
YouTuber, HowToBasic, has over 17 million followers from sharing DIY hacks for simple and seemingly ridiculous stuff to complex tasks. And you can do the same.
Teach people how to complete simple to complex tasks — like making different recipes or how to fly a drone. It might not seem like much, but there’s always something you know that people out there are willing to pay for.
Pro Tip: Inject humor and creativity to your content themes and video presentation.
Masked videos are a popular content creation trend where YouTubers conceal their faces using masks, helmets, or other creative means to maintain anonymity or add an element of mystery to their videos. This approach allows creators to focus on their content, skills, or storytelling abilities without revealing their identity.
An added advantage is you can record an unmasking video when you’re ready to let your audience see your face.
Pro tip: Pay special attention to your voice and vocal delivery. Since your face is concealed, your voice becomes one of the most critical tools for connecting with your audience.
When it’s not right to create a faceless video
A faceless YouTube channel isn’t for you if:
You’re not sure how to connect with your audience
When you create a YouTube channel that’s based on your face, it’s easier to build up a personal connection with your audience. Viewers can instantly recognize you from your face, your smile and your presentation style.
If you’re finding different YouTube channel ideas without showing your face, it’s important to think about how you’ll create a connection with your audience without using your facial expressions.
Think about ways to make your personality shine through in your script, your voice and your video content. If you’re using an avatar or animations, think carefully about how you can make the characters appeal to your audience and help you build a personal connection, even without showing your face.
You care about brand recognition
When people can’t see your face, it can also be harder to build up brand recognition. If you’re a content creator who has built a personal brand around your image, leaving your face out of your YouTube channel content can create a challenge.
If this is your choice, you need to find other methods to make your brand recognizable in your videos, such as adding your brand logo as a watermark to all your YouTube content. This is really helpful for helping to protect your intellectual property online, so it’s a good idea to add this extra step in the editing process.
You have poor editing skills
You might also find that you spend more time editing your videos, especially if you’re using animations or illustrations. Generally, the more complex the idea, the longer it will take to edit your content.
To save time, look for AI tools that can automate tedious aspects of your editing process.
Come up with a creative name for your YouTube channel
Now that you know all the faceless ideas you can explore for your YouTube channel, the next step is to come up with a creative channel name so you can start testing your ideas out.
If you already have a channel name in mind, congratulations, genius! If not, we’ve done the hard work for you. Check out our compilation of 2,000+ YouTube channel names and see if something catches your attention. Or use our channel name generator to speed up your ideation process.
YouTube channel ideas without showing your face FAQs
Find answers to common questions about faceless YouTube channels.
Can I create a faceless YouTube channel?
Yes. There are many successful YouTubers who do not shows their faces on their channels. What matters is how well you present your ideas and content in a creative and engaging manner that captures your audience’s attention.
How do faceless YouTubers make money?
Faceless YouTubers make money from their content. If you share interesting content in your niche, people will watch it and you can monetize your channel down the road. You can also make money from partnerships and influencer gigs.
Why do people create YouTube channels without showing their faces?
There are many reasons why people choose faceless YouTube channels. Some creators are too shy to talk in the front of a camera. Others want to maintain privacy and anonymity.
What are some channel ideas for faceless YouTube channels?
Animated videos, quotes and virtual tours are some of teh ideas you can explore if you don’t want to show your face on your YouTube channel.
This blog was originally published in September 2022, it has since been updated in November 2023.
