YouTube Now Lets You See How Much Time You’ve Spent Watching Videos

We’re all guilty of wasting time on YouTube when we just don’t feel like getting off the couch. It can often be hours before we realize that we’ve actually wasted a lot of time. If you tend to do this often, YouTube has a new tool to help you get a grip on things. It’s part of the Digital Wellbeing initiative that Google announced at I/O 2018 back in May.

Many of Google’s Digital Wellbeing features are available on services like Gmail, Android, Google Photos, and more. Some features were introduced for YouTube at I/O as well which include reminders to pause viewing after a certain period of time. It’s now going to roll out a “Time Watched” profile which will be located in the Account menu.

This profile will give users a better understanding of how much content they watch on the service. They will be able to see how long they have watched YouTube videos on a particular day, the previous day, and over the past week.

These figures are based on the user’s watch history on YouTube. If you delete videos from your history or view them in the Incognito Mode, they won’t figure in this total. If you have viewing history paused then it won’t be possible to track time spent on the service.

Google is yet to clarify, though, if YouTube TV watch history and YouTube Music streaming will be counted in this total as well.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Apps, Google, YouTube