YouTube Is Bringing New Shelves, Tabs, And More To Your Smart TV
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Summary
- YouTube’s latest quarterly update for its smart TV and gaming console app focuses on enhanced content discovery with the introduction of five new shelves: “Continue your search,” “Listen again,” “Live performances, remixes, and covers,” “Primetime Channels,” and “From your top channels.”
- The update also improves navigation by introducing a dedicated “Podcasts Tab” in the library and separating Shorts into their own rows within the Watch Next feed and Subscriptions tab for a cleaner layout.
- Beyond content discovery, YouTube is expanding the loop functionality to all on-demand videos and has implemented expanded inline previews on channel, subscription, and topic pages. These features are currently rolling out.
YouTube is rolling out a suite of upgrades as part of its quarterly update cycle, bringing solid enhancements to the YouTube app for smart TVs and gaming consoles.
In Q1, YouTube brought enhancements to the YouTube Shorts experience on TVs, paired with full-screen channel previews and a handy new parental control. This time around, YouTube appears to be focusing more on making content easier to find on TVs.
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Highlighted by the streaming giant in a new support post, the YouTube app for TVs, not to be confused with the YouTube TV app, will now feature five new and distinct ‘shelves.’
- ‘Continue your search’ shelf: Allows you to seamlessly jump back into content you’re inclined to watch by highlighting your top three searches.
- ‘Listen again’ shelf: Highlights top songs that you’ve previously searched for and listened to.
- ‘Live performances, remixes, and covers’ shelf: Allows you to explore alternate versions of your favorite songs, “beyond the official versions.”
- ‘Primetime Channels’ shelf: Surfaces content from your most recently searched for and watched Primetime Channels, but only if you’re subscribed.
- ‘From your top channels’ shelf: A top-level view of content from your most watched YouTube channels.
You can loop a lot more than just playlists now
Source: YouTube
Elsewhere, the quarterly update also brings a new ‘Podcasts Tab‘ that allows you to jump back into podcasts from your favorite creators directly from your library.
Additionally, Shorts won’t bother you on your main home page anymore. According to YouTube, it has “split out Shorts from long-form videos for a cleaner layout that makes it easier for you to find the content you’re looking for.” Shorts now surface within your Watch Next Feed and the Shorts Shelf on your Subscriptions Tab.
Source: YouTube
Further, previously limited to playlists, the option to loop is expanding to all on-demand video content, paired with expanded inline previews for channel pages, subscription pages, and topics pages.
These features are rolling out now, and should be available widely over the coming days.
