YouTube Channels Add Sorting Options for Shorts and Live VODs

YouTube is adding new filtering options on mobile to make it easier to find Live VODs and YouTube Shorts on a channel. Currently, the YouTube mobile apps only let users sort videos by popularity or date of publication, making it difficult to access the different types of videos available on a specific channel. 

Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer tweeted yesterday that the new shortcuts for accessing YouTube Shorts and Live VODs are now rolling out on all channel pages on mobile. The exec also said that the “sort by oldest” option was going away as it’s “not used a lot and it wasn’t available everywhere on YouTube.”

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YouTube Shorts, the TikTok-inspired video format that YouTube launched globally last year is now front and center in the YouTube mobile apps. The bottom navigation bar provides access to a TikTok-style algorithmic feed for YouTube Shorts, though the process for checking Shorts videos posted on a specific YouTube channel has been far from seamless. Until now, Shorts videos were buried at the bottom of the “Home” page of a channel, and they were completely missing from the “Videos” tab.

YouTube says that its new Shorts format has been gaining momentum, with the platform announcing 5 trillion all-time views on Shorts back in January. However, a recent study revealed that many Shorts videos published on YouTube were actually pirated TikTok videos reposted by scammers.

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  • dftf

    08 April, 2022 - 10:29 am

    <p>I can’t stand the <strong>shorts</strong> feature: they are all vertical-video format, and if you’ve done a search, and tap on one, it resets you back to the top of the results-list once you tap back; regular videos don’t.</p><p><br></p><p>If anyone from <em>YouTube</em> might-happen to see this comment, here some things you could add:</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Add a language option to the filter: </strong>you can currently filter by <em>duration, upload date, content type</em>. It would be great to see a <em>language</em> filter added, so I can limit to videos in English only. This would be useful for finding tech videos, as you often find lots of overseas reviewers when searching.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Add a folders feature into the Subscriptions: </strong>currently, Subscriptions is just one, flat list of all the channels you’re subbed to. I’d like to be able to create categories in there, such as "Tech", "News", "Politics", "Local", "Nature", "Comedy" and so-on.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Add a "related channels" discovery feature: </strong>there really needs to be a better-way to find similar content, other-than just the "Home" tab, or seeing if a channel-owner lists any related ones in their "Channels" tab (many have none).</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Make the "Community" tab actually worthwhile: </strong>very-few creators ever use it, and likely because it’s not made more discoverable. When users go to their <em>Subscriptions</em> list, and tap on a channel which shows an update, they always get taken to the "Videos" tab, even if there is nothing-new there; if the new content is actually a post on the "Community" tab, default to that instead of "Videos", I’d suggest.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Let users pick a specific quality-setting for videos</strong>. It used to be on <em>YouTube </em>whichever quality-setting you last-used, such as 720p, applied to all future videos. Now, you have "Data saver", which usually selects 240p or 360p, or "Higher picture quality", which goes-for 1080p, 1440p or 2160p. The latter-two are pointless on my <em>Pixel 3a</em>: the screen-resolution is 1080×2220, so in landscape there are 1080 "lines" down the screen; so 1440p and 2160p are beyond what the screen can draw! Let users set their own, default-qualities for "on mobile-data", "on Wi-Fi, portrait" and "on Wi-Fi, landscape".</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Permanently hide comments after a report</strong>. If I see spam comments, such as those bots which start a chain promoting bitcoin, and report them as "spam", permanently then hide those comments from me, rather-than show them again after the comments list refreshes.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Remember last video, and playback-position. </strong>It’s irritating when someone puts a link to another video in the comments, and when you tap on it, it takes you to that video; but when you tap <em>Back</em>, it doesn’t go back to the video you were on, but just the "Home" or "Subscriptions" tab. It would also be great to see a feature where you could return to a video, and be asked "continue from where you left off?", as many-other media-player and VoD services now do. (Heck, even some DVD players did!)</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Introduce a cheaper YouTube Premium tier. </strong>I’m not-interested in things like <em>YouTube Originals</em> or <em>YouTube Music</em>, I’d only really like the ability for videos to keep playing audio in-the-background, no ads, and maybe picture-in-picture. £11.99 a month (~$15.60USD; ~€14.40) is a lot to ask for that. Surely a cheaper sub just for those features, such as £4.99, could be added?</p><p><br></p><p>How’s about that for some free market-research? ;)</p>

    • fishnet37222

      Premium Member
      08 April, 2022 - 11:03 am

      <p>A lot of those issues are why I only watch YouTube on my PC. I can right-click a link or CTRL-click a link to open it in a new tab. I also use an ad-blocker which gets rid of all the ads inserted by YouTube. Unfortunately, it does nothing for the sponsor segments that the creators themselves add.</p>

  • Mick

    04 August, 2023 - 1:19 am

    It’s nice.

  • Mick

    04 August, 2023 - 1:22 am

    More is needed: drag and drop shorts in the timeline to rearrange shorts on the homepage. Also, shorts on the homepage need to show the entire short. As it is, the top and bottom is cut out. Yet the entire short shows up on a phone. This is needed for design considerations.

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