YouTube’s experience on televisions has always felt as a late occurrence compared to watching it on phones or on the web. But with television recently more and more popular than the mobile to watch YouTube in the United States, the television experience will finally get a redesign soon, and that is great news, as long as some annoying problems are solved in the process.
Almost all my YouTube observation takes place on my TV through the Apple TV application. I thought this made me a transmission dinosaur, but 2025 statistics say different, and that is why YouTube has promised to prioritize the big screen this year in a way that was never before.
This week, to link with YouTube’s 20th birthday, we hear that the video house shortly is obtaining a “TV display update” that will be released “this summer.”
The precise details of what that means are scarce, but a teaser image (above) gives us an idea what to expect, along with some promised improvements.
These include “easier navigation” (hopefully including an improved search experience), in addition to some “quality settings” and a better reproduction experience. YouTube is also promising “simplified access to comments, channel information and subscribe.”
That last point caught my attention, because a relatively recent change to subscriptions in the YouTube Apple TV application has become a serious pain, and according to Reddit’s threads, I am not just to feel that way.
Instead of listing their subscriptions in alphabetical order, the TV application in most services (Google TV, Fire TV and more) now covers them confusingly in order of mysterious “relevance”, although that is not the case in the mobile application. And I get frustrated almost every time I see YouTube on the big screen.
A more similar experience to television
Okay, there are greater complaints about YouTube experience on televisions, especially an increasingly painful advertising experience that is making YouTube mandatory, unless enjoying pressing the silence button every few minutes.
But I hope that YouTube promised navigation improvements include recovering alphabetical subscription lists or a better way to experience them. Previously I used the subscription list like an EPG, which helped me quickly find the last series I was enjoying (my last obsession was the excellent musical trials of garbage theory).
Now, the channels are ordered by what YouTube considers “more relevant”, which is generally different from what I think is relevant, because YouTube cannot (yet) read my mind. This is something that can change when you see in a browser (going to subscriptions> administer> and then choose AZ in the drop -down menu), but not in the many TV applications.
Instead, there are solved solutions such as the launch of your phone to your TV, but I am a native of TV when it comes to YouTube, so I hope that the great redesign that is on its way also restores part of the functionality that was recently eliminated in Google’s classic fashion.
There is a danger that these new features are accompanied by ‘updates’ such as “pause ads”, which is something that YouTube has been testing while touching its fingers such as Mr. Burns. Another feature that has been promised is a “second experience on screen that allows you to use your phone to interact with the video you are watching on television.”
I am realistic: Google and YouTube rarely give us new features without finding ways to simultaneously print more advertising money than we spent watching YouTube content on TVs every day (yes, really). But while the TV experience finally feels so polished and easy to use as the mobile application, I will probably continue to spend more time on YouTube than in the best transmission services.
