Even as a tech journalist who spends all day, (almost) every day playing around with gadgets and apps, there’s still plenty that I miss: like, for example, the ability to view how much time you’ve been spending on YouTube from inside the mobile app. It works like Digital Wellbeing (on Android) or Screen Time (on iOS), but specifically for YouTube. You can dig into how much time you’ve spent on YouTube today and over the past week, with an average for the last seven days. This has actually been around for years, and it’s available whether or not you’re signed up for YouTube Premium — though when I checked up on my stats, I was glad that I’ve been paying the monthly fee, if only to avoid hours and hours of ads. First step — turning on Watch History
The Watch History feature in YouTube (Image credit: Future) The ‘time watched’ statistics we’re talking about here will only appear if you’ve got YouTube Watch History turned on. You can check this inside the mobile app by tapping your profile picture (bottom right), then the cog icon, then Manage all history (you can find the same settings on the web here). To see what you’ve watched most recently, you can tap your profile picture then History in the mobile app, or choose History from the left-hand navigation menu on the web. There are tools here for searching through your history, deleting the entire record of everything you’ve ever watched, and putting your Watch History on pause. It is of course entirely up to you whether or not you enable Watch History. The downsides are Google knows more about you, and it can be hard to get out of recommendation rabbit holes; on the plus side, you will get served videos to watch that might be at least vaguely related to your interests (it’s great for discovering new music, for example). More of your Watch History can be got at through the comprehensive Google Takeout service, which you can find on the web here …
