Google is set to bring YouTube apps major new features in the smart TVs and gaming consoles that will lead to better experience of the videos. But while some are seemingly new and innovative, others just seem like YouTube intensifying the annoying aspects of the app most people have started to dislike, particularly Shorts.
Say Hello to More Shorts and a Variety of Shelves
YouTube will continue to add several new tabs, which will help users to quickly find videos that they’ve watched or might be interested in. These include:
- Continue Your Search: Continues from there by displaying your three most recent searches.
- Listen Again: One idea is the ability to have a shelf for any music that the user has been listening to mostly.
- Live Performances, Remixes, and Covers: Introduces versions of songs that are somehow related to the ones you like.
- Primetime Channels: For subscribers, this gives the content that is in the group of Primetime channels recently viewed by the user.
- From Your Top Channels: This shows videos from other creators that you usually watch so that you do not miss any content coming through that channel.
- Podcasts Tab: A new attribute for your desktop to save time on searching podcasts.
While these may help with content discovery, the current number of new shelves might make the UI appear cluttered, thereby confusing new users.
Fake News: More Shorts, Even on the Big Screen
Love Shorts? Great—YouTube’s making them unavoidable. The platform is now giving Shorts their own:
Subscription Tab Shelf: So they pop up in feeds you would expect more formal engagements from.
This means that now videos which are oriented vertically – and that is clearly not for television – will be in center of our widescreen display. It’s a decision that is bound to anger the core audience that watches in traditional video formats and look at the TV app as a way of evading Shorts.
Everything in a Loop and Preview More
Some changes are more welcome:
- Looping All VODs: It no longer has to be just playlists; you can loop any video from the options of playback control.
- Immersive Channel Previews: New combined result channel pages now include full size previews which makes it look even more interesting.
- Expanded Inline Previews: Located on channel, subscription, and topic pages so users can access it more quickly.
New Analytics for Creators
For creators, YouTube will be introducing a Device Type card in Studio Analytics so that consumers can see watch time data for mobile, desktop, TV or tablet. This can be helpful to creators as it will allow them to know which country their content is most being viewed in.
