Social Media YouTube How to Manage YouTube Notifications Choose the alerts you want to see without getting overloaded By Simon Chandler Writer Simon Chandler is a former Lifewire writer who covered cryptocurrency, social media, AI and other topics. His work has appeared in Wired, TechCrunch, and The Verge. our editorial process Twitter LinkedIn Simon Chandler Updated March 03, 2020 Prykhodov / Getty Images YouTube Facebook Flipboard Pinterest Twitter Snapchat Instagram YouTube Online Dating Tweet Share Email Video-sharing platform YouTube makes it easy to keep up with your favorite videos and channels by sending notifications when there's new content or updates available. YouTube sends notifications about channels you've subscribed to as well as ones you may be interested in. If you're getting inundated with alerts, it's easy to manage the number and types of notifications YouTube sends you and set your preferences. We've included instructions on managing notifications from YouTube on the desktop as well as YouTube's iOS and Android apps. Manage General Notifications on YouTube Desktop Choose what YouTube notifies you about by setting some general specifications. Access all your current notifications at any time by selecting the bell on your YouTube page next to your profile picture. Open YouTube on the desktop and sign in to your account. At the top of the screen, select your profile picture. Select Settings. Select Notifications. The General Notifications area allows you to set your preferences about what alerts you receive on your mobile device or desktop. Toggle on or off alerts about subscriptions, recommended videos, activity on your channel, activity on your comments, replies to comments, mentions, or activity on other channels. The Email Notifications area is where you give your permission to receive emails about all the YouTube activity you requested. Toggle this on if you want to receive these emails, or toggle it off if you don't. Toggle on or off if you want to receive notifications about subscriptions, product updates, or updates about your channel. Manage Channel Notifications When you subscribe to a channel, you'll automatically get all notifications about that channel's activity. It's easy to turn off these settings or adjust your preferences. Go to the channel's page. If you're not yet subscribed to the page, select Subscribe. When you subscribe to a channel, you’ll automatically get personalized notifications. Click the Notification bell to switch between All notifications, Personalized notifications and None. Personalized notifications will differ according to the user. YouTube uses various signals to decide when to send you notifications. This includes your watch history, how often you watch certain channels, how popular some videos are, and how often you open notifications. Manage YouTube Notifications on the App Notifications can also be managed via the iOS or Android YouTube app on your smartphone. Open the YouTube app. Tap your profile picture (at the top of the screen). Tap Settings. Tap Notifications. Toggle on anything you want to receive notifications about, and toggle off what you don't want to see. Manage Channel Notifications on the YouTube App Easily manage notifications for channels you're subscribed to on the iOS or Android app. Tap Subscriptions (at the bottom of the screen). At the top of the page, tap All. Tap Manage. Tap the Notification bell next to each channel to turn notifications on or off. You won’t get notifications when a channel’s audience is set as made for kids, so there's no need to adjust notification settings.