Google is trying to make sure that more users use its apps meaningfully at Google IO this week. The firm made several announcements about Android P that were aimed at getting users to — believe it or not — use their phones even less than our phone-addicted generation already does. Now it’s designing one of its most addictive products, the YouTube service, to be less addictive than it is.
Google has added a feature to the Android app which lets you tell the app to notify you if you’re on there for too much.
Now, the YouTube app will alert you if you’re binging too much. You can schedule it manually at any time between 15 minutes and 3 hours.
The fact that this feature isn’t turned on by default diminishes it somewhat, on the other hand, people who need t be told to stop watching YouTube aren’t the type of people who’ll listen to such warnings so your mileage may vary on how you find this change.
Google had previously designed YouTube to be addictive, adding autoplay video, including a scrolling playlist of similar videos just so users would spend that extra minute on its video service. Arguably, this is a Frankensteinian monster of its own making.
The feature is only available on the mobile app, but will likely spread to the web-app in the coming weeks.
Via The Next Web.