With advancements in technology, devices, and apps that never let us put our smartphones away, it is becoming increasingly tough to control digital usage. There is enough content on the web, social media apps including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, that can kill hours that after a certain point, you wouldn’t start noticing. For this precise reason, companies like Apple, Google are trying their hands with this souring issue. Google introduced Digital Wellbeing, iOS with ScreenTime to show your smartphone usage habits and how many hours you spend in any given day.
It’s not just Google and iOS, Facebook, Instagram too introduced their own set of the dashboard where you can check the hours you spend on it, set timer alerts, turn off notifications and much more. Both the companies have baked this feature right into their apps so you are better aware. Following the suite, Google’s YouTube product is also adding one such feature ‘Watch Time” where you can view how much time you spend on watching videos daily, weekly. In this article, we will see how you can View ‘Time Watched’ On YouTube App, let’s get started.
Note: Since it is baked right into the main YouTube app, you don’t need any 3rd party app to access this feature.
Here’s how to View ‘Time Watched’ On YouTube App:
- The Time Watched is available for both Android and iOS so you can be using either of OS to know the time you have spent on YouTube.
- Since the feature is not available on the web, you will have to be running on the latest version of the YouTube app which you can update from the PlayStore.
- Once you update and open the app, hit on the profile icon at the top right. Now you will be displayed with your ‘Account screen’, where ought to be a ‘Time watched’ option.
- From the bunch of options available there, you can view the ‘Time Watched’ icon which will show you a summary of how much time you’ve spent watching YouTube videos.
- Here, the feature will display the stats for the present day, yesterday, last week, and most importantly, your daily average.
- The feature also has tools to manage your YouTube time with options like remind me to take a break, enable/disable auto play next video, scheduled digest where you can enable or disable notifications for new uploads from channels you follow, and ability to disable sounds and vibrations.
Conclusion: That’s how simple the process is to view your ‘Watch Time’ on YouTube. Since the feature shows you daily average, it for the best if you can stay aware of it and control the usage. It is not suggestible to have high watch times that will have a huge effect on your social and physical life. It also has a ‘Remind me to take a break’ option where you can set how often you need to be reminded to close the app and get back to your social life. However, it isn’t like iOS Screentime since it doesn’t lock you out of the app but it is advisable to keep limits and take breaks in regular intervals.
While the feature works flawlessly, it is a shame that the company didn’t roll it out to Website version, but we just wish YouTube does that in the near future. Since the smartphone isn’t the only device where we watch videos on YouTube and it doesn’t sync even if it is logged in with the same account. So, do try out this feature and let us know how do you like it and if the feature bought any changes to your watching habits.
