YouTube Obscures Subscriptions For Google TV Users By Shoving Shorts Above The Fold

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Finger gymnastics just to reach your favorite long-form content

Summary

The YouTube app for TVs is rolling out a significant update that places a dedicated Shorts feed at the top of the subscriptions page.
While this separates Shorts from other subscription content, the prominent placement occupies nearly half the screen, pushing longer videos down and obstructing their titles and thumbnails initially.
This change, which cannot be dismissed or moved, may frustrate users who prefer long-form content on TVs, despite the Shorts feed only featuring content from subscribed channels.

TVs are the primary device source for US users to get their daily YouTube fix, ranking higher than mobile devices by watch time. Naturally, the streaming giant saw it fitting to give the YouTube app for TVs (not to be confused with the YouTube TV app) a facefilt — a part of which is going live now.

YouTube is pushing its short-form video format with a dedicated Shorts feed that now occupies the top of your subscriptions page. The update was announced late in April, and it has since gone live, as highlighted by 9to5Google.

The refresh is likely to bring a mixed bag of user reactions. On the one hand, users now don’t have to pass through Shorts when browsing through content on most of their feeds. Shorts would ideally only show up in a separate and dedicated panel on users’ main subscriptions feed, right at the very top. The same point, however, also serves as a con.

Finger gymnastics just to reach your favorite long-form content

Source: YouTube

The Shorts shelf occupies almost half of the subscriptions page’s top section, leaving long-form videos partially obscured and pushed further down the screen, as seen in the screenshot above.

The first impression of the Subscriptions page is now dominated by Shorts, and to view long-form video titles and their entire thumbnails, you’d now have to actively scroll down.

For what it’s worth, the Shorts feed on the page will only surface content from channels you’re subscribed to, which should offer some sense of relevancy. However, their top position, paired with the fact that the shelf can not be dismissed or moved around, could lead to frustrations for users who find short-form content less appealing, especially on a large-screen device like TVs that are not optimized for Shorts.

Has the change rolled out for you? Let us know what you think of it in the comments below.