I consistently hear people on YouTube complain that the subscribe button doesn’t do anything for viewers, now that channel notifications are controlled by the bell. But it does do something: it puts the videos from that channel in your subscription feed, which is readily accessible on all versions of YouTube. So why do people act like it doesn’t exist? I think it’s super convenient, especially if you’re subscribed to a ton of channels and don’t want your notifications feed flooded with new videos.
I want to know who has seriously ever clicked the notification bell. YouTubers are constantly telling me to and I have never even come close. Why would I want more pointless notifications in my life?
I use them for some YouTubers who only post once or twice a year. Very useful tool. Just because you don’t see the value doesn’t mean it is valueless.
I have 986 subscriptions, most are small creators that don’t post often. I have notifications for the key ones that I really don’t want to miss.
I think the Bell is most useful if you use it for creators like h bomber guy where you’re going to get maybe one upload a year, using the notification Bell for a channel that uploads everyday would be insane.
I use the subscription feed and use the notification bell for my favorite channels. I don’t have notifications turned on for YouTube, but it does show in the top right corner of YouTube itself.
I don’t always feel like watching everything I’m subscribed to, so this gives me a kind of “favorites of favorites” feed.
i use mine for my friends who ruin youtube channels!
I have clicked the notification bell for almost all of my subscriptions. From the notification I put the video to my Watch Later if I want to watch it. For example The Escapist has some videos I want to watch and it is easy to curate them with the notifications.
I use the subscription feed and it’s how I’ve always used YouTube. I certainly don’t want it giving me random notifications. It’s not like I need to drop what I’m doing during the day just because someone published a video. When I want to watch videos, I’ll go check my subscriptions.
Agreed. In my mind every notification is a chore to be dealt with, and I’m not going to let Youtube assign me chores.
I turned off notifications for everything outside text messages a couple of years ago and I could physically feel the anxiety going away. I hate this trend of notifications for the smallest things.
Ping.
Reverify our distance to target.
One ping only
I’ve like newpipe because it’s just a clean experience of only my subscription feed. I’ve hated any page other than subscription on YouTube, since I can’t even stand most of the thumbnails and I don’t endlessly use YouTube. Don’t even check out most of the videos in my own feed, so don’t need all the additional clutter YouTube shows now days.
If you want a desktop experience, I recommend the Unhook extension/addon for major browsers.
I had no idea people didn’t use the subscription fees. It’s the only way I engage with YouTube
If you block enough channels the default suggestions aren’t bad at all. I found a few channels I wouldn’t have known about that way.
That said, I spend about a minute looking at the suggestions and then dip to my subscriptions page.
My interaction with YouTube is pretty much the search bar at the top. I generally only go to YouTube when there is something specific that I want to watch/listen to: a specific song or video, etc. So there’s little reason for me to subscribe to anything.
Have an extension just to automatically redirect to my subscription page the moment i type in the youtube homepage. I haven’t seen the youtube front page in almost a decade and it is so worth it.
Dude I’ve had that exact same thought. Like, yeah, the subscription is where everything is. I never use the regular home page, my bookmark for YouTube goes to my subscription.
There’s zero need for me to use the bell. I never understood why people complained about videos not showing up, etc.
TIL
I’ll admit it lol
Personally I remember when the main page used to be the user’s subscription feed. After they changed it, I just updated my bookmark and continued to land on the subscription feed. At some point everyone else seems to have forgotten that that happened and started pushing the bell.
One thing I’ll say though: They started making shorts take up a whole row and I’m not happy about it. I don’t really watch shorts unless they’re Hank Green’s, and then it depends on my mood. I’m on YouTube for YouTube videos, not TikTok videos
If you have ublock origin there’s a script you can put in that automatically hides YouTube shorts from your subscription page.
Them putting shorts in their own row made it much easier. You don’t even need to find a script, just right click on the shorts and block element.
Works great, until they change the page again.
Same here. My bookmark goes to the subs page.
I use the subscription feed. Definitely don’t use the bell. Bell is so cumbersome where you get a email for a new video, then you get that pop-up preview on your browser, and push notifications on your mobile device. Too much for me, especially since I’m at a point where I subscribe to 600 channels or so, which makes it hard to play favorites. That’s sort of what the bell is for I guess, determining whose content you value the most.
SIX HUNDRED CHANNELS. I have maybe 50, and of that most of them are defunct comedy channels like Derrick Comedy or David Mitchell’s soap box.
I guess I’ve been acculumating subscriptions for a long time. I do occasionally unsubscribe when a channel goes defunct or I lose interest or whatever, but I don’t do it regularly. I had been a videographer and broadcasting student as a teenager so I guess I wanted to find a lot of inspiration.
Wait…. Thats not how people use YouTube? I browse almost exclusively from my subscriptions page.
Same, the front page is a scary place and god help your soul if you click on trending
Really? For me the front page hits almost spot on on what I want to watch. Weird. I use subscriptions tab first and then when im done with it I move to feed to watch new stuff I might not know and almost all of them are interesting.
Default front page yes. Customized with my data, no not really
i have a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory that youtube intentionally shittifies the frontpage if you disable your watch history as an attempt to make you turn it back on.
I very much use the subscription feed. I don’t know how alone I am with this, but I usually only subscribe to channels when I want to watch almost all videos they post.
A lot of the time if a creator gets a little bit popular they start to spam videos and that’s when I unsubscribe, even if I generally like their content. I feel like I cannot ever keep up anymore so I just watch their videos sporadically from then on.
I think most people sadly don’t use subscription feed. They just blindly watch whatever youtube algorithm throws at them.
I started with subscriptions and now I like both methods, they’re complementary. The algorithm is really good at suggesting either random stuff I like or new stuff I might like. And I subscribe for stuff I know I’ll want to watch no matter what. Works pretty well!
My bookmark is set to subscriptions page but yeh, when I run out of stuff to watch I’ll see what the algo has for me
I almost exclusively use the subscription feed. The front page is a mess of terrible recommendations on videos I have no interest in watching.
I just use RSS feeds of the YouTube channels I want to follow. I am sure that will be taken away from us soon to force us to do things the way they want. Until then … go RSS!
Creators both put out so much dogshit that I have to cherry pick and also my sub feed doesn’t account for actually good content.
So yeah I stopped paying attention to it. Even as a YouTube premium member.
The peak of garbage was when YouTube enforced a 10 minute watch time for max profit. They rolled it back but dude there used to be 8 minutes of fluff for a 2 minute video.
I use an extension called PocketTube to manage my subscriptions into categories. I’m sure there’s a better way, but it works for me.
Newpipe does the same on mobile, ill have to try pocket tube, does it need a (yt?) account?
If you turn off history, it is very important and definitely shows in your Home feed, actually, it is the no.1 reason to turn off history
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This is the way. While YouTube has a subscription feed it is very basic. It has no organization, no way to filter watched videos and of course it only has videos from YouTube. Using the RSS feeds I get a much better interface and can follow all of my video sources in one place even if they are on different sites.
That sounds very interesting! Where do I start if I want to build my own RSS feed? Can you recommend any software (foss would be nice)? How do I add a subscription into the Feed?
You are looking for an “RSS Reader”. This is a tool to read RSS feeds (every channel on YouTube has a feed) and present the updates to you. There are many options including many open-source options.
Personally I run my own service which emails me new entries (I like email, I’m weird like that) and they get sorted into a folder for me to go through when I want to watch videos. But there are many other types of readers such as standalone apps, web services and other options. If you Google “feed reader” or “RSS reader” you should find many results.
Once you have selected a reader to try (don’t worry, you can use OMPL import + export if you want to try another one) then just paste the YouTube channel URLs into the reader and it should discover the feed for your. Of course the best thing about RSS is that it isn’t restricted to YouTube. PeerTube, Odysee, Nebula, most blogs, Reddit, Lemmy and many other sites support it. So you can subscribe to basically whatever you want to.
Thank you! With this information I found ‘Nextcloud News’, which seems to be a RSS reader I can use on my nextcloud server.
The amount of RSS reader on F-Droid is overwhelming and some look better than Nextcloud News. But having everything accessible on every device beats design.
I’ve heard good things about Nextcloud News but never used it myself. The most important thing is to pick one and get started. Once you have some experience reading feeds you will have a better idea what you are looking for and re-evaluate the options. With OPML import and export being widely supported switching readers is easy.
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Thanks, if my nextcloud solution isn’t working well I will check out Feedbin.
Everything in one place, controled by me, no algorithm, that sounds perfect!
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This sounds like a great idea. What feed reader do you use? Are there ones specially for this or better suited to it or will any do?
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