YouTube Starts Showing How Much Time You Spend Watching Videos

Even Google knows its products are addictive. As part of its efforts to promote a digital wellbeing, Google has decided it will show you the amount of time you spend binge-watching on YouTube, a feature that's rolling out globally on both Android and iOS versions of the app from Monday.

In its blog post titled 'Tools to Take Charge of Your Digital Wellbeing', Google announced the new Time Watched tool which will be accessible to its YouTube users via the Account menu. The personal time watched profile will show you how long you have watched YouTube videos today, yesterday, and over the past 7 days.

The new feature will be available under your account menu starting this week. The video service already has a number of other features such as break reminders and notification limitations to help you keep a track of time lest you end up spending (or wasting) one more day of your precious digital life.

Earlier this year, Google unveiled the Take a Break feature for YouTube for Android users, letting them set a reminder to appear every 15, 30, 60, 90, or 180 minutes that pauses the video currently being seen. Users can then choose to close the app, or continue to watch the video by dismissing the notification. The setting is optional, and is switched off by default. Other digital wellbeing-related YouTube features the company unveiled alongside include the ability to disable sound and buzz notifications from the app for a specified period of time, and a Scheduled Digest that provides all updates only at a particular time of day. The company once again detailed these features in Monday's blog post.

After the rollout of Take a Break, Google also brought a Dark Mode to YouTube for Android, helping users avoid eye-strain and prevent interference with their sleep cycle.

Written with inputs from ANI