YouTube is testing a terrific new feature: Quieting the hell down

Let me know if this sounds familiar to you. Years ago, you subscribed to a YouTube channel. At the time, you were really into it, so you set notifications to “All” to always get a push notification on your phone when something happened there. However, over time, you became less interested in the channel. Now, you still get notifications about the channel’s activities, but you don’t care, so the alerts are just annoying chatter you swipe away.

Google knows this kind of thing happens. Unfortunately, Google also knows that many people deal with this not by unsubscribing from that specific channel but by turning off YouTube notifications altogether. This is not ideal for obvious reasons, so Google is testing a new system that intelligently reduces notifications for subscribed channels you don’t visit much anymore.