- YouTube has rolled some new improvements to smart TVs and consoles
- They include several new sections that help you find videos and music
- This follows news of a larger redesign due to rolling out “this summer”
YouTube is required to polish its smart TV experience in a great way this year – and the first signs of its efforts now roll out its app on both TVs and game consoles.
As Google announced in a new YouTube Support Post, there are nine new UI adjustments designed to help you find shows, podcasts and live music. Although not as big as the promised redesign of YouTube’s TV experience, they need to help save you time and effort when navigating in the slightly dated app.
First, there is a new section “Continue your search” on the Home screen, which apparently shows your top three searches. It sounds convenient considering that the search experience on TVs can be pretty inconsistent and meeting.
Other new home screen sections (which YouTube refers to as ‘shelves’, for some reason) includes ‘Listen Again’ (showing you the best songs you have searched for) and a practical new called ‘live performance, remixes and covers’.
As a person who regularly digs into YouTube’s treasure trove of unclear live performance, I can see myself using it quite a bit.
Another new section includes one for ‘primetime channels’ where you can see the channels you have subscribed to, such as Paramount+, Showtime, Starz or Dazn one place. It seems that the lines between YouTube and YouTube TV, its cable replacement service in the United States, could soon begin to blur further.
The latest ‘shelf’ (or section) is possibly the most useful as you can see in the picture above, the section ‘From your top channels’ gives some shortcuts to your most seen YouTube channels. It should mean less time hunting in the section a little annoying subscription.
Outside of these new sections is the biggest arrival, the biggest arrival, a new podcasts tab. In February, YouTube noted that it is now the most popular service to listen to podcasts in the US (according to Edison Research), so this feature certainly makes sense.
Another promising upgrade is that YouTube has now shared its more mobile -friendly shorts from its long -term videos. There will now be a ‘shorts row’ in your ‘Watch Next’ Feed, plus a dedicated shorts section in the subscription tab.
It is not yet clear whether this means that you never see shorts in your subscription holidays (something I would be happy with), but no matter what it should make the experience feel cleaner.
If you like your videos to be played on repeat, it is now also possible to loop all on-demand videos on YouTube feature that was previously only available for playlists. To do so, go into the Play Settings menu and select the ‘Loop’ option.
The last UI fine adjustment in this update round is that ‘inline previews’ (the little video teasers you see when you are hovering over a video miniature image) has now been expanded to pages for channels, subscriptions and topics.
This feature is likely to divide meaning so that it can prove the most controversial of this otherwise positive step forward for YouTube’s TV experience.
This update will soon be rolled out to the YouTube app on your smart TV or game console or by the end of this quarter in June. I haven’t received it on my Apple TV box yet, but hopefully it will be available on streaming boxes soon.
What else comes?
Last week, YouTube celebrated its 20 -year birthday by teasing a redesign of his TV experience, which apparently comes “this summer” (or by late September).
It did not extend much with details, but released the preview image above and promised “easier navigation” along with “streamlined access to comments, channel info and subscription.”
These upgrades appear to be more focused on the playback experience than the new improvements to the home screen, but are certainly also welcome. The big question is whether we will also see other ‘upgrades’ as ‘pause ads’ that are added to the mixture along with the wider redesign.
We will have to wait until later in the year to watch, but with a new “other screen experience” that allows you to use your smartphone to interact with the videos you watch will also come later in the year, it is clear that YouTube on Smart TVs is changing – and mostly for the better.
