Identifying & subscribing to YouTube channels

In the early days of YouTube, things were quite, but as time goes by, Google decided to throw in many bells and whistles. We like bells and whistles, but not when they come off as confusing and redundant.

There was a time when a user wants to see more of what a particular channel has to offer, he or she would simply click on the “Subscribe” button to get things up and running. However, in the year 2017, Google, in its mindset that it knows what users want, chose to switch it up a bit. Here’s the deal, subscribing to a channel usually means every newly published video from that channel would show up on the homepage. For some odd reason, Google was no longer in agreement with this method. Every video from a subscribed channel is no longer shown on the homepage, so what gives?

Google’s algorithm at work

The design angle of the new algorithm is all about allowing users to view other videos from channels they have not subscribed to. There’s a way out of this madness, thankfully, and we’re going to talk about that. When you’re on the YouTube homepage, there are three primary options: Home, Trending, Subscriptions. Click on Subscriptions to see all videos from your subscribed channels. It’s that easy, but the only problem users will likely come across, is the inability to set the Subscription option as the primary section on the homepage. We recommend switching to Subscription then bookmark. The bookmarked URL should look like this: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions

Get YouTube video notifications via email

To get YouTube video links via email, watch a video from one of your favorite YouTube channels. Below the video, there’s a Bell, just click on it. You’ll be asked if you want to get notifications via email for all videos or just the highlights. Now, if you’d rather enable notifications for several channels at once, you would need to visit the subscription manager section. Here the user will see a list of all subscribed channels, and the option to add as many to the notification list. Overall, we recommend going with the first option rather than by email. Getting videos by email, especially for persons with many YouTube channels on their subscription list, can be overwhelming, and that’s never a good thing. Thoughts?