Believe it or not, YouTube is my most-watched streaming service by far. A big part of that is the fact that I use it while I work because something has to fill all that extra monitor space. Because of that, I pay for a Premium subscription, which I think offers some of the best value in streaming today.

More specifically, I pay for the Premium Lite plan because the extra features offered with the full-fat Premium don’t appeal to me, and I like to save money. It’s been a good ride, but that doesn’t mean everything’s perfect. In fact, some things bug you that you don’t even realize you can control. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to scramble for my remote to stop a video from playing, or to doze off during something, only to find out I plowed through my watch list. As it turns out, you don’t have to suffer through this, and it’s a simple setting change away from putting an end to it.

What’s included?

YouTube mostly ad-free

Price

$8 a month

Live TV

No

Turn off autoplay ASAP

Save yourself the headache

It might sound obvious, and to you, it might be. For me, it was something I just lived with without realizing there was another way. The problem is that it’s not exactly easy to turn this mode off if you don’t know what you’re looking for. The simplest solution I have is to open up the YouTube app on your phone, click on Settings, go to Playback, and toggle off the Autoplay next video option. It doesn’t seem like the same option appears on desktop, so the mobile route is the easiest way to solve the problem. Instead, desktop users will have a button that appears on the video they’re watching that they have to click. Doing this turns off the feature.

For some reason, YouTube has different settings for different devices. This means if you watch YouTube over a wide range of devices, like me, then you need to check the settings on each of them. It’s annoying, but trust me, it’s well worth the time and effort to do it.

What this does is stop videos from playing after they finish. It will give you control to pick what you want to watch next at your own speed. You’ll still be shown a recommended video at the end, but it won’t start playing. I don’t know about you, but this is a huge quality of life upgrade that I can’t believe I didn’t do earlier.

For whatever reason, YouTube makes it more difficult than it has to be. The good news is that once you change the setting, you don’t have to do anything else. There will be more trying to figure out where you put your TV remote just to stop a video from automatically playing. It’s a feature that I wish were off by default, and not just on YouTube.

Things automatically play on several services, and Netflix is a prime example of this. It doesn’t make for a great viewing experience in my eyes, so I don’t get why it’s done. I’d much rather have control over what I’m watching versus something just automatically going. In Netflix’s case, it usually makes sense as it’d just play another episode of the show I’m watching. Then again, it does the same for movies, so I’d rather there be some sort of middle ground.

Boosting those numbers up

I assume that’s what it’s about

With auto-play being such an annoying feature, I struggle to think of a reason why it feels like every streaming platform uses it. The only logical thing I can think of is to hype up viewing numbers, which certainly works. I don’t think that’s a very consumer-friendly option, but if it juices the numbers up, then I get it.

I would still like it if the mode were toggled off by default, and I’d like to have a lot more customization over my viewing experiences across the board. More targeted recommendations would be really appreciated. If I give something a thumbs up, whether it’s on Netflix or YouTube, I’d like to see things fill up my watchlist as a result.

As a viewer, I’m not all that concerned with a company’s financials, and that’s where a lot of my criticism comes from. Things like Netflix cracking down on account sharing or YouTube making it near impossible to enjoy without Premium are just things that hurt viewers — but they help the company’s bottom line.

Whatever the strategy is, it seems like it’s working out quite well for many companies. Netflix subscribers are through the roof, and it doesn’t look like there’s an end in sight there. We’ve been talking for years about a streaming bubble being ready to burst, but it really seems like the big services just continue to grow. On top of that, they are making the experience worse for many people, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference.