Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google has announced a slew of improvements to YouTube’s TV and console app.
- The app now offers five more shelf/category types on your home feed as well as more places to watch Shorts.
- The company has also added a podcasts tab and support for looping all content.
YouTube is available on many devices, but the website and smartphone app usually get the lion’s share of changes. Now, the company has announced a slew of features and improvements for the TV and console app.
Google announced a variety of improvements to the YouTube app on consoles and TVs in a post on its support forum. These improvements have either landed or are still scheduled to arrive in Q2 2025. For starters, your homepage will now show five new shelves or category types.
These new shelves are “continue your search” (showing your top three searches), “listen again” (showing top songs you previously searched for or listened to), “live performances, remixes, and covers,” a “Primetime Channels” shelf (showing content from recently searched/watched channels), and “from your top channels.” You can check out the latter shelf type below.
Google is also adding a podcast tab to YouTube on consoles and TVs. Enjoy watching Shorts? No? Well, you’ve now got a Shorts row in your Watch Next feed and a Shorts shelf in your subscription tab. The company has also added the ability to loop all content, previously restricting this option to playlists (accessible via Playlist Settings). Finally, YouTube on consoles and TVs now supports inline previews for channel/subscription/topic pages as well as immersive channel previews.
In any event, we’re glad to see Google paying attention to the console and TV app. However, I’d definitely like the ability to hide Shorts content on this app. This request comes shortly after we discovered evidence that Google is working on a feature to rein in your Shorts addiction on the smartphone app.
