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 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.
This. There is no way in hell I would want to be notified of a YouTube video dropping. I’ll watch when I want to watch, and it’s always the subscription feed that I go for. I will scroll back to the previous spot that I had watched and go through the feed from there to see if there is anything worth watching. If no one has posted for awhile and there is nothing new to watch in my subscription feed, then I’ll go to the Home feed and look at recommened videos, but 90% of the time I’m only going to check the subscription feeds.
ReVanced Manager on mobile, and SmartTubeNext on my TVs.
Agreed. In my mind every notification is a chore to be dealt with, and I’m not going to let Youtube assign me chores.
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
It is my default page for Youtube. I want to see the most recent content from creators I have subscribed to.
After exhausting the subscriptions page, then I will go to the main page for related content. Shorts and the Explore are avoided at all costs.
Same. My subscription feed is a curated list of creators whose videos I look forward to and probably watch on release. If I notice that I consistently don’t watch the new videos anymore I unsub.
I thought everyone used YT like this.
apparently it is a very low count, supposedly 2% of views.
I don’t know if the information is accurate any more, I heard it on the Hello Internet podcast quite a few years ago.
I personally never remove anything from my feed unless they’re spamming shorts or posting hate content. I’ve got channels that I haven’t watched in 5+ years that I’m still subscribed to.
I think you’re really the minority on the platform that are curating everything. When I talk to anyone else the home page is where they get most of the videos to watch.
Same. TONS of old channels just sitting there, waiting for a revival or just sitting as a memorial. However, they do have a way out, for channels that disappear and then reappear with completely new style of content. Only hapenned twice but I didn’t want them there if the stuff they were posting was going to be the norm.
I actually make a double exception for a channel getting hacked even if it was basically defunct and I hadn’t seen them in years or would be interested anymore. I remove them, then, if I figure out who they were, I get them back later once their account is back. Hapenned to Phoenix Kappashiro.
The most absurdly enduring channel on my list is marasy8. I have subscribed to them for nearly 15 years, and they have not stopped making content nor changed its nature.
That is how i use youtube, but now it is poisined with those crappy shorts. They are changing youtube into tiktok
Shorts ruined the subscription feed.
You can’t really blame creators for trying to stay afloat, but fuck Google for not letting me turn off YT Short Notifications
youtube feed is a toddler you’re trying to tame. even the slightest misdirection will end you up with infinite crochet videos for 2 weeks because you watched a video about the last crochet artists in cambodia
Yeah, it is weird.
I never watch duck videos. But if I watch 10 seconds of one duck video, YouTube is like:
“OH YEAH, YOU LIKE DUCK VIDEOS!? HERE ARE SOME FUCKING DUCK VIDEOS!!!”
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.
I always use the subscription feed, in fact, my custom homepage has a link to specifically that page. However, my husband didn’t even notice that there was such an option and only uses the recommended feed (we talked about it recently). I personally can’t stand recommendation engines. These have destroyed my art business in social media platforms. I need chronological.
I’ve heard that the subscription feed doesn’t always show you uploads from the creators you’re subscribed to.
I must not be subscribed to enough people for that to happen.
Otherwise, I don’t let a non-subscription video live in my history unless liked it, and I generously block channels for the slightest click bait bullshit, so my home feed is pretty consistent as well.
I use YouTube in a similar fashion, I have a bunch of subscriptions and nearly exclusively watch them, and I make sure the algorithm don’t see non subscribed videos in my history.
It seems to work because I only learned about Mr beast from my nephew a year or two ago.
I still don’t know who this Mr beast is. Never had a suggestion or watched any of their videos.
YouTube tested an opt in feed on a group like the how the bell has like a sometimes notify mode to curate the subscription page but quickly canned that. It’s like at that point wtf does subscribing even do.
Subscription feed shows your subscriptions
This used to be true for a while, specially around the time the bell button was introduced (so the conspiracy theory is youtube made the sub feed worse on purpose), but it no longer is. There is absolutely no one showing any verification of missing sub uploads anymore, and it was super easy to verify when it happened.
YouTube has a long history of enshittifying itself and the UI with every feature release or redesign, but they seemingly, finally, stopped, after the dislike button. They got distracted with Shorts, which, for better or worse, meant they stopped fucking up other stuff.
If you’re worried about not getting notified about our latest upload, don’t forget to press that little bell icon …
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
Thank you for asking this question because this has bothered me too. I subscribe to a bunch of mostly educational Youtube channels and then the only thing I do on Youtube is go to my subscribed feed and watch them.
But then I hear people talk about how channels they subscribe to just don’t ever show up on the home feed so they end up missing things. Then Youtube implemented an additional system where you not only have to subscribe but you also have to set it to be notified of new videos. Thus starting the whole problem all over again where the home feed algorithm has too much stuff you are subscribed and notified to for it to all show up.
There is this nice little feature that shows you a chronological view of subscribed video releases that everyone ignores for no reason.
I use it almost exclusively - I’ve bookmarked Subscriptions instead of any other page. But it does feel like I’m unusual in this sometimes.
I use it consistently. I, however, do not like the shorts panel taking up a ton of space in the feed now. My subs feed shouldn’t have shorts from people I am not subscribed to, but it does.
I have zero notifications enabled and use the sub list exclusively (about to switch to RSS), although I’m probably an outlier since I have a habit of sacrificing comfort just to stick it to big tech.
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.
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
