YouTube has announced to roll out a new feature called bedtime reminders to help late-night surfers to sleep on time meaning that even YouTube wants you to stop watching sometimes.
YouTube’s bedtime reminder feature joins the platform’s existing “take a break” reminders, and both are among a broader set of YouTube wellness and screen time tools released in 2018 as part of Google’s Digital Wellbeing initiative.
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The ultimate goal is to help users more responsibly use Google products, an issue that’s only intensified during the coronavirus pandemic as more and more of our time is spent inside staring at screens. YouTube says it’s sent 3 billion “take a break” reminders over the last two years.
“Bedtime reminders let you set reminders at specific times to stop watching videos and (you guessed it!) go to bed.
“You set start and end times in your Settings, including whether or not you want the prompt to interrupt a video or wait until the video is over. You’ll also be able to dismiss or snooze the reminder,” the company said in a statement.
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The new feature by YouTube is already for both Android and iOS users and it will be rolled out gradually for all users soon.
As part of Digital WellBeing features the app has a Take a Break feature that lets users set reminders to take a break from watching videos. These reminders can be set to appear every 15, 30, 60, 90 or 180 minutes.
YouTube also has a Scheduled notification digest feature that allows users to combine all of the daily push notifications into a single combined notification.
Additionally, the app also has a Disable notification sounds and vibrations feature.
This feature ensures that notifications from the YouTube app are sent silently to users’ phone during a specified time period each day.