Google wants you to watch YouTube, but not so much that it is harmful for you. The firm is adding new tools to help you track and manage your YouTube habits as part of its digital well-being focus.
Google today is introducing a new feature in its bid to further ‘digital wellbeing’ and enable users to ‘focus on what matters most and disconnect when needed.’ In a post, the company highlighted all the ways it was now enabling users to take control of their YouTube consumption rate.
Starting today, it will be adding in a new « Stats » option which will let them know just how many YouTube videos they’ve watched over the past seven days, with users also able to limit it the current and previous day if they want to. Google also noted previously introduced features like « remind me to take a break ». With this capability, viewers are able to set up YouTube to remind them to take a break in granular 5-minute increments.
Finally, Google wants users to have control over their notifications from the app itself. It highlights two features, one which lets users bundle all their YouTube notifications into just one a day, and another which lets them disable sound and vibration in notifications between the hours of 10PM and 8AM (or any time period you want.) Google will be bundling all this under a new ‘Time Watched’ menu option to make its time-management system more accessible to users. Previously, all but the new stats option existed in YouTube’s various apps, although they were split up between different menu options.
YouTube isn’t the only Google product to introduce support for digital well-being feature, nor is Google the only platform maker to introduce it. Android Pie will let users monitor and limit their phone usage with its Digital Wellbeing app. In the same manner, Facebook introduced support for time-management on Instagram and plans to do the same on the mainstream Facebook app eventually as well.
Source: YouTube
