This is a frustrating issue for YouTube users. You might have subscribed to a YouTube channel because you really like the content and want to be notified whenever a new videos gets posted by a channel/creator, but this doesn’t happen.
You don’t seem to be getting notifications when they post a new video, and instead you have to go looking for it on their channel page or via the search bar, or you might randomly find it on your YouTube homepage “recommendations” feed, but you aren’t explicitly notified that it’s been published. You keep missing new videos from a channel, even though you want to catch them as soon as they go live.
This is down to the way YouTube’s notification systems work, and it’s quite confusing – it’d be simpler if it was all bundled into one, but they separate out the Subscription and Notification features.
To ensure you get notifications whenever a new video is published on a YouTube channel, you need to not only subscribe to the channel, but also hit the Notifications bell icon next to it. This makes sure your are notified whenever that channel posts a new video.
It’s a bit baffling why they don’t just combine everything into the Subscription feature, but anyway let’s go through a quick illustrated guide of what to do to make sure you get notified whenever a creator publishes a new YouTube video.
Click the Notification Bell To Get New Video Notifications
The solution to this problem is easy. When you subscribe to a channel, you also need to click the Notification bell icon next to the subscription button (or just load of any of their videos and hit the Bell icon on it’s own if you’re already subscribed).
You can find these buttons directly underneath any video:
This ensures that you should actually get sent email notifications whenever that channel owner publishes a new video on YouTube, so you should not need to go looking for their videos. This only works for that channel though, so you’ll need to hit the bell icon separately for all channels you want new video notifications from.
As a side note, while this should work, it is also true that YouTube has a habit of automatically unsubscribing people from certain channels on their subscriptions list, which means you’ll probably stop getting notifications of new videos from that channel as well if this happens to you.
Why YouTube does this isn’t clear, but it’s worth periodically checking your Subscriptions on the left hand sidebar when logged into YouTube, to make sure your main subscriptions are all intact and haven’t been auto-cancelled by YouTube. If you need to, re-subscribe to these channels and hit the Notification bell again as well to make sure you start getting emails when they post new videos again.
Subscribed vs Subscribed & Notification Bell
Because of this confusing system, a lot of YouTube creators sign on and off their videos with “click subscribe AND hit the notification bell” or something similar, and it’s because of this problem a lot of subscribers will report that they don’t get notifications of new videos even when subscribed to a channel.
Therefore here’s a run down of what happens when you’re only subscribed, versus what happens when you’ve subscribed AND hit the Notifications bell for any one YouTube channel:
Subscribed Only – When you only press the Subscribe button, then that channel’s videos (new and older) will often show up in your YouTube homepage feed, and sometimes in your recommended feed on the right hand side of other videos when you load them, as long as you’re logged in (if you’re not logged in, your homepage will just contain a random bunch of mainstream, non-personalized videos). See here on managing your YouTube homepage recommended feed better if it’s full of videos you’re not interested in. However, you WON’T actually get emails notifying you when that channel posts new videos.
Subscribed & Hit Notification Bell – When you click Subscribe on a channel and also click the Notification bell next to it, then new videos from that channel will show in your homepage feed and recommended feed on the right hand side, but you’ll also get email notifications whenever that channel posts a new video, so you can keep more up to speed with new content on that channel as soon as it’s published.
Therefore if you’re really interested in closely following a channel, to the point where you want to be made aware of, and watch, new videos as soon as they’re posted, then you need to Subscribe AND hit the Notifications bell.
If you’ve got just a passing interest in a channel, and will go back to it every now and then, but aren’t bothered about seeing every new video ASAP, then just stay Subscribed only, and you won’t get emails every time a new video gets posted.