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YouTube will stop emailing subscribers about new videos next week

A lot happens on YouTube, and the Google video site has for ages emailed subscribers that opted into alerts about new uploads and livestreams. YouTube is getting rid of these emails next week as very few people opened alerts about new videos from their inbox.

On Thursday, August 13, new YouTube video email notifications — for those subscribed to them — are going away. This covers new uploads, livestreams, and premieres. The primary and only alert method going forward will be Android, iOS, and web notifications. Of course, many more people find out about new videos on social media, either directly from a creator or when shared.

The rationale for YouTube is how “less than 0.1% of these emails are opened.” Messages about your “account, mandatory service announcements, etc.” remain, with Google hoping that the broader change today will help “you more easily spot and pay attention to the important emails.” It reflects companies increasingly wanting to reduce information overload.

People have told us that these emails contribute to inbox overload – we hope this change helps you more easily spot and pay attention to the important emails

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End users can manage their notifications here, as well as enable browser-based ones:

https://www.youtube.com/account_notifications

YouTube tells Creators that it “didn’t see any impact to watch time when we experimented with turning off these emails.”

In fact, our tests showed that when we don’t send these emails, more people engage with mobile push notifications and their Subscriptions feed.

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com