YouTube is making waves by bringing some big changes to its app for TVs and gaming consoles. But don’t expect something truly better, just mostly more of the streaming giant’s worst feature.
Say Hello to More Shorts and a Variety of Shelves
In April 2025, YouTube mentioned that it was planning a redesigned video player and other improvements. But first spotted by 9to5Google, there’s much more in the works, and some of it isn’t exactly exciting.
The app will be adding a number of shelves to give you quick access to videos. YouTube explains more about what to expect:
- The “Continue your search” shelf shows you your top three searches, allowing you to jump back in right where you left off.
- The “Listen again” shelf is a dedicated music shelf that shows you the top songs you’ve previously searched for and listened to.
- The “Live performances, remixes, and covers” shelf shows you other versions of your favorite songs, beyond the official versions.
- The Primetime Channels shelf, for those subscribed, shows content from your most recently searched for and watched Primetime Channels.
- The “From your top channels” shelf shows you your top watched YouTube channels.
A Podcasts tab will also let you quickly jump into podcasts directly from your library.
But if you’re not a fan of Shorts, we’ve got some bad news for you. Those will now be split out from longer videos to easily access. There will be a Shorts row in the Watch Next feed and a Shorts Shelf on your subscription tab. Just wonderful.
You will also be able to loop more content. Previously available on just playlists, you can now loop all VOD content. Just choose Loop from the Playback settings.
One of the more interesting changes seems to be an improved preview experience. Inline previews have been expanded to channel pages, subscription pages, and topics pages. The roll-out of the Immersive Channel Previews has also been completed. These are fullscreen background previews on channel headers that help make the page more immersive.
Creators will also be able to view a new Device Type card in Studio Analytics to see watch times from mobile, computer, TV, and tablet.
Vertical Videos and TVs Don’t Mix
I’m a fan of watching YouTube on a bigger screen, and these changes are not exactly mind-blowing. I absolutely hate Shorts, so I’m not excited to see those be more prominently featured. Why do we need more vertical videos on a TV screen?
But the other changes, like the improved previews, seem to sound really nice.
Also, I’m not thrilled that more AI is coming to YouTube. Once you search for a query, AI Overviews will address the query and display relevant clips under a new carousel.
