5 YouTube Features Google Needs To Add ASAP To Fix The Platform’s Biggest Flaws
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Your video-watching experience on YouTube doesn’t take a hit without a premium subscription, but only if you know how to minimize the impact of premium features using hacks. While YouTube Premium has its fan base, it’s been a long time since Google rolled out game-changing features to its video streaming platform rather than launch a new subscription tier, YouTube Premium Lite.
I don’t know about anyone else, but the long craving has me wondering whether Google is running out of ideas about introducing meaningful changes that can take the platform to the next level. I’ve thought about the problems, and here are my five suggestions that will end the feature drought and make YouTube a better place.
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5 Search videos within a channel from mobile
Get what you want in less time, without getting distracted
YouTube search functionality works well, finding the video and Shorts content that might be the most useful to you. While it gives you the power to decide which one to click, it shows an overwhelming amount of content on the search page. That’s why I always type the topic and the name of my favorite content creator, who I feel might be the best to cover it, in the search bar.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, mainly for two reasons. While YouTube search results show content from the creator you typed, you’ll see other unrelated content published by other creators, especially if it can’t find anything from the channel you typed in the search box. Also, the search result page shows channels by the name you typed. Google can clear this mess by following how the X (formerly known as Twitter) app approaches this issue.
While the search result page containing a pool of content on various related topics may not be a bad thing, Google should give users the choice to decide whether they want to do it that way. The company should let users search for videos within a channel to make the search results more accurate on the YouTube app.
Instead of a global search, a search within a channel ensures that the search page shows content only from the creator I want, with no way of getting distracted by other related topics from other creators. This is available on the YouTube web app and should come to Android and iOS clients.
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4 More filters when searching for videos
Quantitative improvements are the need of the hour
Google can improve its Search filters on YouTube to help users find what they want in less time. The existing filters for searching videos work well, but the numbers aren’t enough, especially for someone who understands and watches content in multiple languages on YouTube.
I watch content in three languages on YouTube, and it makes my search results more cluttered because YouTube shows more content across all the languages I watch videos on the platform. A simple solution to this problem is a new search filter that shows videos in the language you want to watch.
Another option worth considering is allowing users to limit the search results to content only from the channels to which they subscribe. I’d also love to see a search filter to get content specifically from creators I haven’t subscribed to or new channels. This would help me discover talented new creators quickly. It’ll also increase the chance of new channels getting more exposure on YouTube.
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3 Switch to hide Shorts or long-form content
Don’t confuse users with the content they might not be interested in
I believe bite-sized clips and long-form videos can co-exist, but Google must ensure that it doesn’t push Shorts over long-form content too much, and vice versa. The best way to go about it is to give users the choice to select whether they want to watch Shorts or long-form videos to appear for a particular search term.
When I want to watch a review of the best Android camera phones, I’m not interested in vertical videos, highlighting only some core aspects of the product. I’m interested in a detailed review with all the benchmark data and camera samples to make a better judgment. However, in many cases, I see YouTube Shorts at the top of the search results when I look for something on the platform. A button to hide Shorts on that search term at that moment can fix this issue.
Similarly, when I want to cook something but don’t know the steps, YouTube Shorts can help. Instead of wasting time on lengthy 5-to-10-minute videos, a 60-second clip with instructions and ingredients to use for cooking can save a lot of time. This is an instance where I don’t want long-form content to appear on the search results page. A button to hide long-form content can help me achieve that.
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2 Create a group of channels
It has multiple benefits
The ability to create a group of channels may sound like a ground-breaking feature, but it could improve the user experience. If you create multiple groups of YouTube Channels you’re subscribed to, it becomes easier to find the channel you forgot, unsubscribe, and clean up the subscription page on YouTube.
Groups with similar YouTube channels open up the possibility of a YouTube feed where you’ll see video suggestions only from the channels in that group. For example, if you create a group called “Gaming” and add your favorite creators to it, clicking the group opens a feed that features videos from those channels only. This is how X’s Lists feature works.
Another major benefit of allowing users to create groups is that they can be used as filter options. For example, if I want to watch a Call of Duty streaming session on YouTube only from my favorite gaming creators, I could do it easily by applying the Gaming filter.
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1 Allow users to enforce a hard block on YouTube channels
Their videos should never show up
YouTube only cares about displaying video suggestions you’ll likely watch, not only from channels you subscribe to. While that sounds great on paper, the YouTube algorithm can get things wrong about your taste and show content from creators you don’t like. You can choose “Do not recommend channel” to tell YouTube that you don’t like to see any content suggestions from those channels.
However, this doesn’t fully block content from those creators appearing on your YouTube page. You’d still see videos from those creators on the search page if they uploaded content on the topic you searched. YouTube also suggests content from channels the creators collaborated with. A block option can solve this problem, and it should mean blocking from everywhere: Home, Up next suggestions, and search results.
YouTube shouldn’t put them behind a paywall
While there are strong reasons to pay $14 a month to use YouTube Premium, essential fixes shouldn’t be treated as premium perks and should be available for all. At the very least, it should roll out most of the above features to free users, if, at all, Google decides to introduce them in the future. I wouldn’t mind if a block option on content creators is exclusive to Premium users, but as a free user, I can’t wait for Google to bring the rest of the features to YouTube freemium.
