Google has implemented a trio of new tools in the mobile YouTube app that were designed to help customers get reminded when it’s time to take a break and stop bing-watching.
With YouTube’s excellent recommendations engine, it’s easy to lose yourself in the rabbit hole of related videos that you didn’t mean to watch but were too interesting to pass on.
As part of Google’s new Digital Wellbeing initiative, the YouTube platform now has several ways to encourage users to take a break and stop binge-watching:
  • Silencing notifications—Normally, all sounds and vibrations in the mobile YouTube app are disabled between 10pm and 8am. Now you can customize the start and end times by tapping your account icon in the app, then choose Settings → Notifications → Disable Sounds & Vibrations and select your desired start time and end time.
  • Scheduled digest—Off by default, this combines all push notifications you’d receive throughout the day from the YouTube app, including live streams, upload and comment notifications, and sends you just one daily digest notification instead. To set a specific time to receive your scheduled digest, hit your account icon in the app, then choose Settings → Notifications → Scheduled Digest.
  • Custom reminders to take a break—You can get reminded to take a break from watching YouTube every 15, 30, 60, 90, or 180 minutes. The reminder automatically pauses the video when it appears. Tap Dismiss to cancel it and resume watching the video or hit Settings to go directly to the app’s settings interface where you can turn the reminder off or edit its frequency.
These handy enhancements require YouTube for iOS version 13.17 or later.