YouTube just dropped its latest quarterly update, and it’s a boon to those who do most of their watching on a smart TV, PlayStation 4/5, and the Xbox Series X/S. Today, Google announced a whole host of new features for the app, mostly improving navigation and discovery with some updated ‘shelves’, a newfangled ‘Podcasts’ tab, and most importantly of all: a way to shun those damn Shorts.
Top shelf stuff
Let’s start with the shelves. These are how the YouTube app for TVs (and consoles) distinguishes recommended content into different categories that you might be interested in – typically starting with a ‘Recommended’ shelf, followed closely by ‘Continue watching’ or ‘New to you’. YouTube has brought five new shelves into the mix, only one of which doesn’t apply to South Africans:
- “Continue your search” – This shelf will always display the user’s top three searches and allows them to access these channels and videos in a more timely manner.
- “Listen again” – This one is purely to allow more music content to permeate the home page, showing the songs and albums users have searched for and listened to previously.
- “Live performances, remixes, and covers” – It’s not the music you’re already familiar with, but users might just find a version they can jam to more than an original piece.
- “From your top channels” – Likely the most useful shelf, users can be force-fed content the algorithm already knows will appeal to the user, rather than wading through new stuff.
- “Primetime Channels” – A shelf that “shows content from your most recently searched for and watched Primetime Channels,” currently unavailable in South Africa due to a lack of Primetime support.
Read More: YouTube hikes Premium prices in South Africa
While not technically a ‘shelf’, a new ‘Podcasts’ tab does exactly what you think it does – and can be easily accessed from the ‘Library’ sector. Also introduced is a new loop feature that the mobile and web versions have had for quite some time. Previously, users could only loop an entire playlist on their smart TVs and consoles, but now the feature encompasses all on-demand videos, too.
Easily the biggest upgrade is the segregation of long-form videos and Shorts when scrolling through the home page – something we’d love to eventually make the jump to the rest of YouTube’s platforms. The idea was to offer a “cleaner layout that makes it easier to find the content you’re looking for.” Shorts aren’t gone for good, though. You’ll still find them under the ‘Shorts’ shelf in your library and the ‘Watch Next feed’.
