YouTube Updates Smartphone Apps With 'Time Watched' Digital Health Tool

[MacRumors]

YouTube is the latest app to gain a new "digital wellbeing" section in its iOS and Android apps, allowing you to see how much time you've spent watching YouTube recently. Google announced at I/O in May that it would be introducing a "Time watched" section in YouTube, and today the rollout has begun.

Once you update YouTube on iOS to version 13.33, open the app and tap your profile picture in the top right corner, then tap "Time watched." The main stats area shows how much of YouTube you have watched today, yesterday, the past week, and on average per day. This history is based on your personal YouTube history across YouTube products except YouTube Music.

Below this section are tools to manage your time on YouTube, including a setting that will remind you to take a break. If you toggle this on, you can customize the reminder frequency to enable the notification to appear every 2 hours of YouTube you watch, for example, and can increase that cap to as much as 23 hours and 55 minutes.

Outside of "Time watched," there's a new notification area in the settings tab of YouTube as well. Tap your profile icon, settings, and then scroll down to notifications. In here, you can enable a "scheduled digest" of your notifications, which will bundle all of your YouTube push notifications into a single notification each day, at your own preferred time.

To further lessen the amount of time you spend browsing YouTube, the company will let you disable notification sounds and vibrations completely during any hours you specify, a feature that can also be found in settings. YouTube says that it is "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."

Digital health tools have become immensely popular over the past few months, with Apple launching its own system-wide iOS "Screen Time" features in iOS 12 this fall. More recently, individual apps have taken to introducing their own tools, including Facebook and Instagram.

Article Link: YouTube Updates Smartphone Apps With 'Time Watched' Digital Health Tool

 

[macduke]

OH NO I'm scared to look. YouTube is where I consume the most content.

Just tried it out. Not as bad as I thought, but not great. I turned on the reminder feature, but this is a prime example of Google's horrible design language: You know the tiny label underneath the label next to the switch that you turn on? Well it's not actually a label, but a label as a button (not even hypertext underlined!) you press to change the frequency. I wouldn't have ever realized that had I not been hunting for the feature based on this MacRumors post.

 

[maflynn]

This will not have any effect, people who spend a lot of time on YT won't change their behavior, and those who don't spend time on it, won't care.

 

[TheSkywalker77]

So pretty much iOS 12's Screen Time in YouTube. People who lack self-discipline for time spent on screen won't care about this let alone even use it. Now if you can set a passcode for time limits, that's a different story.

EDIT: Just looked at my watch time... Kind of ashamed of it.

 

[chucker23n1]

When will they update it with a UI that looks like iOS?

 

[2268473]

This will not have any effect, people who spend a lot of time on YT won't change their behavior, and those who don't spend time on it, won't care.

That's a nice optimistic attitude to adopt.

 

[maflynn]

That's a nice optimistic attitude to adopt.

Thanks, I appreciate that.

 

[tricil]

i need a "time viewed" for Macrumors. I've been hitting refresh on the homepage for 11 years