In an effort to give users more control over their digital wellbeing, Google has added several tools to YouTube that are meant to help people control how much time they spend watching videos.
To start, the company has installed a profile to the setting menu that highlights how much video that person has watched both in the last 24 hours, last 48 hours, and last seven days. Once people get a feel for how much they’re actually watching, they can set reminders to take a break. Providing the app with a time limit will cause it to display a popup reminder when that limit is reached.
Plus, YouTube is tackling notifications in a new way. For example, people can elect to have YouTube push just one notification per day, rather than many. lsoYouTube will begin silencing notifications between 10pm and 8am in order to help people sleep without distractions. Each of these behaviors can be fine-tuned to suit individual needs.
The new usage controls are available to YouTube for Android and iOS starting today.
