Sick of YouTube Notifications? This New Feature Could Help

If you’re sick of getting notifications for YouTube channels you haven’t watched in months, Google is testing a new feature that could help.

Viewers who haven’t recently engaged with a particular channel will no longer receive push notifications as part of the experiment, though notifications will still be available via the notification inbox in the YouTube app. The change also won’t impact channels that upload infrequently.

Explaining the move, Google said it found YouTube users simply turn off all notifications from the YouTube app entirely when they “feel overwhelmed or are no longer interested in a specific channel,” rather than simply changing their notification settings.

“The goal of this experiment is to help us find ways to reduce this problem,” Google said in the official update. The change will only impact users who have set their settings to “All,” rather than “None” or “Personalized.”

“Notification fatigue” is a very real issue, according to some studies. A Cornell University study found that participants who paused push notifications for just 24 hours felt less distracted and more productive compared to their baseline. Meanwhile, there have been other studies showing that healthcare professionals hit by constant notifications have a bigger chance of missing vitally important ones.

YouTube has been rolling out some fairly significant changes as of late. The video streaming giant recently started officially rolling out Premium Lite in the US for $7.99 per month, about $6 less than the standard YouTube Premium subscription, which costs $13.99 per month in the US.

Premium Lite gives users the same ad-free streaming experience as YouTube Premium, except for music and music videos. It also doesn’t support downloads and background play.

YouTube has also been rolling out Discord-style communities for some channels in the hope of increasing fan engagement, as well as providing discounted access to YouTube Premium for Google One subscribers.

About Will McCurdy

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I’m a reporter covering weekend news. Before joining PCMag in 2024, I picked up bylines in BBC News, The Guardian, The Times of London, The Daily Beast, Vice, Slate, Fast Company, The Evening Standard, The i, TechRadar, and Decrypt Media.

I’ve been a PC gamer since you had to install games from multiple CD-ROMs by hand. As a reporter, I’m passionate about the intersection of tech and human lives. I’ve covered everything from crypto scandals to the art world, as well as conspiracy theories, UK politics, and Russia and foreign affairs.

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