When you use YouTube frequently, the amount of recommendations and notifications you receive can get overwhelming, especially if you’re subscribed to many channels that upload new videos often.
By default, when you subscribe to a new channel, you’ll start getting personalized notifications. YouTube will send you emails, notifications on your smartphone, and on your computer as well containing highlights of your activity on the platform.
The good news is you don’t have to unsubscribe or block YouTube channels to rid yourself of those notifications. If you don’t want your phone or email to be filled with those messages, learn how to turn off and manage YouTube notifications.
What’s the Difference Between YouTube Notifications and Subscription Feed?
Users sometimes confuse YouTube notifications with what they see on their Subscription feed. When you go on YouTube, and select Menu > Subscriptions, you’ll find your Subscription feed with all recently uploaded videos from the channels you’re subscribed to.
Notifications tell you about the latest videos and updates from the channels you’re subscribed to. When you open YouTube, select the bell icon next to your profile picture to access the notifications window.
When you subscribe to a channel, your YouTube notifications are automatically set to Personalized. That means you’ll only receive notifications about selected uploads and live streams from the channel. In this case, the YouTube algorithm decides what notifications you’re getting, based on your watch history, your list of subscriptions, and other activity on the site.
The other two options here include All notifications, which means you’ll get notified about every kind of activity of the channel, and None, which turns off all notifications from the selected channel.
How to Turn Off YouTube Notifications
There’s a number of reasons why you might want to turn off your YouTube notifications. Maybe you feel that you recently started getting too many notifications, or notifications from channels that you’re not interested in. It could be that you specifically don’t want to receive notifications via email or push-notifications on your smartphone or desktop.
There are three general ways to turn off your YouTube notifications: via the channel settings, account settings, or your device settings. We already covered how to do it via the channel settings – by selecting None from the notifications options under a video from a channel you’re subscribed to. If you don’t feel like going through all of your subscribed channels one by one to turn off notifications, you can turn all notifications at once using your YouTube account settings.
You can do that both on your computer and your mobile. To turn off YouTube notifications on your computer, follow the steps below.
- Open YouTube and sing into your account.
- Select your profile picture at the upper-right corner of the screen.
- Select Settings.
- From the menu on the left, select Notifications.
Here you can switch off all types of YouTube notifications, including Desktop and Email notifications. To do that, toggle the switch next to them.
To turn off YouTube notifications on your smartphone, follow the steps below.
- Open the YouTube mobile app and sing into your account.
- Select your profile picture at the top of your screen.
- Select Settings > Notifications.
You can also turn off YouTube notifications using the Settings app on your smartphone.
To do that, follow the path Settings > Notifications > Apps > YouTube, then toggle the switch to turn the notifications off.
How to Manage YouTube Notifications On Your Desktop
In case you don’t want to turn off all of your YouTube notifications but instead want more control over what type of notifications you get, you can manage YouTube notifications using your computer.
To choose what YouTube alerts you about, open YouTube on your desktop, select your profile picture and follow the path Settings > Notifications.
At the top of the Notifications window you’ll find the General section. Here you can choose whether or not to receive alerts about your subscriptions, recommended videos, activity on your own YouTube channel, activity and replies on your comments, mentions, and shared content. To turn the notifications on or off, toggle the switch next to them.
At the bottom of the same window you’ll find the Email notifications section. Here you can set up the YouTube notifications that you want to receive by email.
How to Manage YouTube Channel Notifications On Your Smartphone
What if you want to receive notifications from the selected channels that you’re subscribed to? In your mobile app, you can also manage YouTube notifications by channel. To do that, follow the steps below.
- Open the YouTube mobile app and sing into your account.
- Select Subscriptions at the bottom of the screen.
- Select All to open the list of your subscribed channels.
- Select Manage.
- Select the bell icon next to a specific channel to manage the notifications.
If among your subscriptions there’s a channel with the audience set to made for kids, you won’t be receiving the notifications by default, so there’s no need to change the settings.
Improve Your YouTube User Experience
There are numerous YouTube tips, hacks, and shortcuts that you can use to improve your user experience on the platform. Being able to choose what alerts you receive from YouTube is one of them. However, if you feel completely overwhelmed by the amount of content that the streaming service offers, the ultimate solution is to delete your YouTube account and see if that has a serious impact on your life.
Do you think you’re receiving too many notifications from YouTube? Which method did you use to deal with excessive YouTube alerts? Share your experience with YouTube notifications in the comments section below.