Tools to take charge of your digital wellbeing
At Google I/O in May, we introduced new tools that help people better understand their tech usage, focus on what matters most and disconnect when needed. Starting today, you can find all of the YouTube tools in one place, alongside your personal time watched profile. Our goal is to provide a better understanding of time spent on YouTube, so you can make informed decisions about how you want YouTube to best fit into your life.
Here are a few tips and tricks to get you started toward building your own sense of digital wellbeing:
Know how much you actually watch (new!): To give you a better understanding of how much you watch, we’ve built a profile that’s available in your account menu rolling out starting today. This profile tells you how long you’ve watched YouTube videos today, yesterday and over the past 7 days.
Remind yourself to take a break: Once you know how much time you’re spending in the app, you may want to set a limit. It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re having fun, which is why we’ll help you set up a reminder to take a break. Just head over to your settings and pick the amount of YouTube time that’s right for you. Once you’ve hit that limit, a friendly reminder will pop up on your screen.
Keep it to one notification a day: If you want more control over when you receive notifications from YouTube, you can bundle all of your YouTube push notifications into a single notification each day and set a specific time to receive your digest. Just go to your settings to choose when you’d like to receive your digest, and from then on you’ll only receive one notification per day.
Disable notification sounds and vibrations: Resisting the urge to check your phone when it buzzes is really difficult, and this can make it hard to fall asleep. So we’ve recently made a change to send all notifications without sound and vibration between 10pm and 8am. You can enable sounds and vibrations, or customize the start and end time in your settings.
We’re dedicated to making sure that you have the information you need to better understand how you use YouTube and develop your own sense of digital wellbeing. We hope these tips are a good start.