Is YouTube suddenly not sending you any email notifications?
You might have gotten email notifications from channels that you’ve subscribed to in the past.
If you’ve turned email notifications on, you’ll get emails about new uploads, a live stream, premieres, etc.
But recently, these notifications have disappeared from everyone’s inboxes.
As such, you might be wondering why you stopped receiving email notifications.
In this article, you’ll learn why your YouTube email notifications are not working, and how to fix it.
Table of Contents
- Why are my YouTube email notifications not working?
- Why did YouTube remove email notifications?
- How to fix YouTube email notifications
- Conclusion
Why are my YouTube email notifications not working?
Your YouTube email notifications are not working because YouTube has removed it.
As of August 13, 2020, you will no longer receive email notifications from channels that you’re subscribed to.
YouTube has removed email notifications for new uploads, live streams, and premieres as of August 13, 2020.
This means that you’ll no longer receive notifications from channels that you’ve subscribed to.
However, you will still be able to receive notifications from the YouTube app or your browser if you’ve turned them on.
So, if you want to check the notifications from channels that you’ve subscribed to, you have to do so outside of your email.
The disablement of YouTube subscription email notifications affects all email providers and not only Gmail.
This affects all email providers and not only Gmail.
Be it Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo mail, you won’t be able to receive email notifications from YouTube anymore.
Why did YouTube remove email notifications?
YouTube removed email notifications because barely anyone opens them, it clutters users’ inbox, and it increases engagement on mobile push notifications.
A mere 0.1% of users open their YouTube email notifications.
Some users have also complained that these notifications cluttered their inbox.
Removing email notifications increased the engagement on mobile push notifications and the subscription feed.
According to YouTube, only 0.1% of these email notifications are opened.
This is an extremely low open-rate.
That being said, removing email notifications would only affect 0.1% of YouTube’s 2 billion user-base.
Secondly, email notifications clutter your inbox.
YouTube has received complaints from users that subscriber notifications are cluttering their inbox.
By removing these notifications, it will free up a lot of inbox space.
Lastly, YouTube has conducted a test and the results showed that the engagement rate of mobile push notifications and subscription feed has increased after the removal of email notifications.
In addition, it does not have an effect on watch time.
Conclusively, YouTube justified the removal of email notifications based on these reasons.
How to fix YouTube email notifications
There are three ways to fix YouTube email notifications.
Use a workaround URL, turn desktop notifications on, or turn mobile notifications on.
You can either use a workaround URL, turn desktop notifications on, or turn mobile notifications on.
Using a workaround URL will allow you to view your subscription activities.
By turning desktop notifications on, you’ll be able to receive subscription alerts on your browser.
Lastly, turning mobile notifications on will send push notifications from channels that you’re subscribed to on YouTube.
Here’s a guide on how you can use each of these ways.
1. Workaround URL
The first way you can view subscription alerts is to use a workaround URL.
There is a work-around URL you can use to view subscription notifications.
One way to view your subscription notifications is to go to your subscription feed.
Here is the link to the URL: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions?flow=1.
It’s not the best solution out there, but it works as intended.
The link will take you to your subscription feed where you can see the list of videos of channels that you’re subscribed to.
It either displays it in a grid form or a list form (if you’re using the YouTube app).
Your subscription feed allows you to look at all of the latest videos in one place.
This is kind of like you did when you were looking at it in your email notifications (e.g. Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail).
2. Turn desktop notifications on
Secondly, you can turn your desktop notifications on.
This will enable YouTube to send you notifications in your browser (e.g. Chrome).
Here’s how you can turn your desktop notifications on:
- Go to YouTube.
- Tap on your profile icon and go to Settings.
- Navigate to Notifications (from the left sidebar).
- Turn on the switch for “Desktop Notifications”.
By enabling desktop notifications, you will receive notifications on your desktop even if you’re not on YouTube.
When you enable desktop notifications, you will receive notifications even if you’re not on YouTube.
The notifications that you’ll receive is based on your preferences.
You can change the type of notifications that you want to receive at any time.
To change the type of notifications that you want to receive, scroll down the notification settings page.
Under “Your preferences”, you can change the type of notifications that you want to receive (e.g. subscriptions, recommended videos).
The notifications on your preferences are enabled by default, so you’ll have to disable the ones you don’t want to receive.
For example, if you don’t want to be notified of recommended videos, you need to manually turn it off.
3. Turn mobile notifications on
The final way is to enable YouTube notifications on your mobile device.
If you use the YouTube app frequently, you can turn on notifications in your device settings.
Since YouTube no longer sends email notifications, turning on mobile notifications is a great alternative.
Here’s how you can enable mobile notifications for YouTube on an iPhone.
- Go to your device settings.
- Scroll down and find the YouTube app.
- Tap on “Notifications”.
- Tap on “Allow Notifications”.
Here’s how you can enable mobile notifications for YouTube on an Android device.
- Go to your device settings.
- Open “Apps”.
- Scroll down and find the YouTube app.
- Tap on “Notifications”.
- Tap on “Allow Notifications”.
By enabling notifications on your device, YouTube will send push notifications based on your preferences.
You can change your preferences by going to the notification settings.
By default, the notifications on your preferences are enabled.
The notifications on your preferences are enabled by default.
So, you’ll have to manually disable notification(s) that you don’t want to receive.
Conclusion
As of August 13, 2020, YouTube has removed email notifications.
This has caused outrage in the YouTube community where many users complained that they want it back.
Despite the complaints, it’s highly unlikely that YouTube will revert email notifications.
For now, it’s best to either enable desktop or mobile notifications to be alerted of subscription activity.
Further Reading
> Why Can’t I See Instagram Reels? (And How to Enable It)
> Instagram Stories Not Uploading: How to Fix
> What Does “Comments on this post have been limited” Mean on Instagram?
Author: Lim How Wei is the founder of Followchain. Feel free to follow him on Instagram.
