A YouTube subscription means subscribing to a user's videos and their public activity (their favorites, their ratings, etc). By subscribing to a user, you'll receive updates and stay informed when something new occurs. To learn more about how to subscribe and subscriptions, click and expand info contained in the topics below:
In order to subscribe:
- Sign into your account.
- Go to either a user's channel page, or on the video watch-page, look to the right hand side of any video. You'll see a yellow "Subscribe" button.
- To subscribe to that user's videos and/or activity, click the yellow
button. You'll receive a confirmation that you successfully subscribed to the user. - Once you've subscribed, you can customize your subscription options.
On the user's channel page (next to their profile icon), you'll see "Edit subscription". When you click "Edit subscription" various subscription options will appear. These include:
- Subscribing to all of a user's public activity (uploads, favorites, ratings etc.)
- Subscribing to only video uploads
- Unsubscribing from the user
- Select option(s) that you'd like to see in your subscription updates.
- Click the "Update" button. You'll now be subscribed to the user uploads/activity.
button. You'll receive a confirmation that you successfully subscribed to the user.
Please note: your email address must be confirmed and you must be signed into your account in order to subscribe to other users or videos.
Where can I view my subscriptions?
You can view your subscription updates in several locations:
The YouTube Homepage
Once you've signed into your YouTube account, the homepage will show personalized updates based on your subscriptions. You'll be able to view the videos from your subscriptions in the "Subscription" module (box). You can see the public activity of your subscriptions (user favorites, ratings, etc.) in the "Recent Activity" module (box).
Having trouble seeing the "Subscription" or "Recent Activity" modules on your homepage? It could be that they're not selected in your account "Customize Homepage" settings. In order to edit which module and updates appear on your YouTube homepage, please visit the "Customize Homepage" page in your account.Your Subscription Center
Your subscription updates will also appear in the Subscriptions page of your account. In order to view your subscriptions from the Subscription page:
- Sign into your account, and click Subscriptions (in the top right-hand corner of the page above the search bar).
- On the Subscriptions page in the left-hand column you'll see "Subscriptions" and "Recent Activity".
- Video updates from your subscriptions will appear in the "Subscriptions" section. Public activity (favorites, ratings, etc.) from your subscriptions will appear in the "Recent Activity" section of the page.
Can others see everything I do? How can I control what other users see?
Other users can only subscribe to actions that are already fully public on your channel. You can see which of your channel actions are public by visiting your account's Sharing Settings page.
If you'd like to change which of your actions are publicly available on your channel and Recent Activity Feed you'll need to make updates on the Sharing Settings page. There, you'll see many actions, and boxes next to these actions. When you select a box, it will appear on your channel, and users subscribed to you will be notified when you perform this action. For example, if you have "Favorite a video" selected, other users will see a subscription update when you add a new video to your Favorites.
Subscription summary emails
If you want a summary of all your subscriptions' recent activities, we can send you a weekly email telling you exactly that!
To receive updates about your subscriptions' recently uploaded videos, follow the steps below:
- Sign in and go to click go to your Account.
- Under "Account Settings," select the Email Options link.
- Click and expand "Subscription & YouTube Options".
- Select the "Send subscriptions updates once each week" box.
- To include specific subscriptions in this update, click the "Show Subscriptions" link and check the boxes next to each subscription in which you're interested.
- Click the "Save Changes" button to save and enable your selections.
