Watch a lot of YouTube? Now there's an easy way to see exactly how much time you spend watching videos on the Google-owned service—if you're brave enough to confront the truth.
YouTube now shows the amount of time you've watched today, yesterday, and over the past seven days. It also shows a daily average. This new "time watched profile" is available on iOS and Android; to check it out, sign into YouTube, tap your Account icon, then tap Time watched.
The feature is an extension of the digital wellbeing initiative Google announced at its annual I/O developer conference in May to help consumers keep their tech habits in check.
As part of that initiative, YouTube has already introduced a feature that lets you set up reminders to take a break.
"Once you know how much time you're spending in the app, you may want to set a limit," YouTube Product Management Director Brian Marquardt wrote in a blog post. To do that, open the YouTube app, tap Settings > General > Remind me to take a break, then select your reminder frequency. Then, once you've reached that limit, a notification will pop up on your screen.
Another recently added feature will combine all your daily YouTube push notifications into one "scheduled digest" that you'll receive at a time you specify. To enable it, open the YouTube app, tap your Account icon then go to Settings > Notifications > Scheduled Digest, and select your desired delivery time.
You can also disable sounds and vibrations from YouTube notifications during specific time periods each day. To set that up, open the YouTube app, tap your Account icon then go to Settings > Notifications > Disable sounds & vibrations, and select your desired start and end time.
Look for more digital wellbeing features in Android Pie this fall.