On youtube's desktop site, I've also noticed that sometime within the last couple months the home page no longer shows the duration of videos when the page loads. After 3-6 seconds, the timestamps pop in. I don't know if this is intentionally or a result of lazy-loading - but seeing that the video thumb, title, author, view count, and age all load instantly with the page, I struggle to come up with a reason it could be unintentional.

This bothers me because I like to know how long a video is before I commit the time to sitting down and watching it. This feels like an attempt at a dark pattern with the intent to improve metrics - surely watch time is a metric youtube cares about.

Has anyone experienced a bug with navigating back from a video? It's been happening for months now but it's on and off.

When you're watching a video and you go back, the url updates but the page doesn't refresh/redirect, the video just ends up restarting. Very annoying.

> The only two possible filters on the list of videos of a channel now are most recent and most popular.

Isn't that all there's ever been? Just chronological and popularity? This post isn't very helpful unless you say what you think has been removed. (I, for one, have always wished for most popular over the last 30 days, but oh well.)

> Also, there's less videos on a single row now.

You're going to have to tell us how many there were before and how many there are now. I'm not seeing any difference. It also depends -- are you talking about the home page? Channel home page? Channel videos tab? Because they all act differently.

Are you sure you just haven't changed your zoom settings or something? Or your window width?

Am I the only one who uses YouTube like this:

* Only go on the Subscriptions page; I've never once visited the "Home" page

* Blocked the Recommended Videos sidebar using uBlock

* Use SponsorBlock

* Use uBO filters to remove Shorts from Subscriptions page

I come to watch what I want, not get all the clickbait on the side.

People at Google don't use Google products, YouTube in particular. It is quite astonishing that so many features are nonsense or not yet implemented. Why I can't search comments in comments section of a video; if a video has 100+ or 1 000+ comments I can't easily find comments that are relevant to me. Why I can't search my playlist videos and my liked videos; I have 1 000+ liked videos and 1 000+ videos in my Watch Later playlist. Maybe I'm disorganized with Watch Later playlist but I'm also a power user which is not satisfied with only casual features. Any yea you can't sort channel videos like you use to(Newest, Oldest, Most Popular). Like you said it's now only Most recent and Most popular. And one thing that I almost forgot, in Web version of YouTube you can search channel for videos and in native mobile app you can't search channel for videos. When I say search channel for videos I mean query with keywords(there is no Search Bar within Channel page or within Videos tab).

Why is there such a mania for reducing sort/finest options?

They carry such a small cognitive load and are of immense value to many, many use cases.

Who decides these things?

This has been going downhill for a while. I don't know if YT engineers actually use the website. Below a certain screen width the date of the video just disappears from view. The video description becomes crammed to the side and is unreadable, with the "more" link rendering on top of the text. This seems to be (??) intentional behavior, why?

search has also become ... rather stupid? it shows a few results and then some irrelevant "recommendations"

Also would be nice if they stopped pushing shorts so hard. Why does youtube want to become tiktok, that is offensive to both users and creators, becayse YT has a distinct use case

Invidious is an acceptable interface to YouTube.

Some things are missing, like searching and queuing videos while watching one (I guess adding this feature could be a weekend project), but there's no ads, you can listen to video without downloading the video part, it does not stop after a while, and is quite lightweight. You can subscribe to channels and there's no magic happening in the videos you actually see, nor any need for a Google account. The information density is correct. You don't wait before a skeleton while the interface loads, because it's instant. SponsorBlock works with it too.

I can recommend. It might not be very sexy, but its interface design is not driven by commercial reasons and does not follow the oversimplification trend.

The biggest offender is Youtube Shorts at the top. With TikTok at least you can restrict your daily watch time and it is pure entertainment anyway - I don't have to open it when I don't want entertainment. Youtube is different because it has lots of useful stuff too and this mixture of the helpful and the addictive is pure evil. It is almost as if every food item in your life is served with a beer, a cigarette, some coke and some crack for free.

A bit OT, but I watch a lot of tutorials with many parts. Is there a good way to track which part I already watched?

Some channels have also opted to remove sorting altogether: https://www.youtube.com/user/enyatv/videos

I understand the desire to control how users are exposed to your content, but I think these options err too much on the side of removing user freedom.

They should rename it to just Tube without You to better reflect the reality.

I gave up on the YouTube UI a while ago and now rely on a script that runs every hour to generate an HTML page of my subscriptions (via RSS feeds): https://kevinfiol.com/youtube/

As usual, Piped is an alternative front-end made with users in mind. You can self-host (persistence not necessary) or use public instances.

Original author is the same as the equally excellent NewPiped mobile app.

https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped

I gave up long time ago and just used RSS feeds from channels I subscribe.

I am fully convinced the only reason RSS still works is that someone at YT forgot the feature exists and so it didn't get fucked with from when YT subscription panel was still working.

Conspiracy theory: If the only remaining sorting options all bury old videos, is this maybe a preparation to put old videos into cold storage?

On a tangent. I used to be able play youtube videos on firefox on my old android phone with the screen turned off. It was some setting in firefox that I can't seem to remember or else is no longer there. It was great because you could listen to a long lecture while walking using up less battery and even more importantly, not inadvertently clicking on something on screen. Anyone have any ideas if it's still possible?

I wonder if they're A/B testing it. Yesterday I wanted to filter a channel's videos and didn't see _any_ options to filter or sort. Now I'm seeing the option to sort by most popular, newest first, and oldest first, which is still different from your experience.

Or maybe they just had a bug interfering with it and are still getting a solution in place (if they even noticed it)

I recently got YT premium in response to their push, but it's messed with my YT enjoyment in a somewhat unexpected way: I hadn't realized to what extent I'd become used to having different sets of recommendations and being able to get fresh starts on recommendations by deleting cookies...

I've almost started to become strategic about what I click on now instead of just going with whatever flow I'm enjoying right now. Not sure if I'll continue the subscription after the trial if they don't give us more options for managing our preferences. I guess I could get a family option for myself just to get more accounts, but I'll have to see.

Interesting story

I used to procastinate a lot in YouTube, so I installed a plug-in in the browser that don't let me get into YouTube. At the beginning I was worried that it's not going to work for me, because if you use te incognito mode the plug-in doesn't work, so I thinked that every time I would want to procastinate I just open the incognito mode.

But surprise! I'm no longer procastinate in YouTube, because every time that I open YouTube in incognito, the recommendations are sooo bad, that I just scroll a few seconds and get out, and now I'm YouTube free for a long time.

I've seen weirdly different sorting options for a while now that vary channel by channel. I assumed it was set by the uploader, but I would believe that its a global change now.

As each of these subscription services have gotten worse, I’ve ended my contracts with each one and I’m probably way happier this way. I’m not overloaded by content, and I feel a more enjoyable sense of discovery when I go looking on purpose for a video. I use brave browser, so gg ads.

Eventually, YouTube will degrade to the point where it’s not worth using. If you know of any truly precious videos up there, I’d start downloading them now.

I'm also annoyed that I can't sort for oldest videos.

I remember being a 10-year old and reading these kinds of threads on the Neopets forums everytime a UI change happened. Back then, everyone would promise to switch to a competitor. Then everyone would forget, get attached to the new UI, and then if they ever changed it again (even changing it back to be more similar to the old one!) we'd hear the say peans about how they are ruining it.

See also: livejournal users threatening to go to dreamwidth, and /b/day (the 4chan exodus to 7chan).

I use the YouTube app on my Tesla often and honestly this UI update has been a welcome improvement so far. The like button is now above the fold so I can easily tap it. It’s the little things

Ugh. One of my favorite things to do is go to my favorite channels and sort by oldest to see how their videos have progressed over time.

Such a shame they’ve made that so difficult for…nothing?

Everything also have a rounded corner now. This is only in my A/B test group though, I don't see it when in incognito.

I just tried and changing "dd" to "da" doesn't work, so it looks like they ditched it completely:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_jKrZ130j5QcXycYK_HePw/vid...

Oh I see what you mean. I'm not sure I ever used those filters so I don't know what it was before... but the overall frontpage seems to keep getting less enjoyable. Shorts, which I'll never watch, taking up tons of room and less videos. I'm not conscious of all the differences, but it sure was better before...

What's been driving me nuts is they took away the ability to toggle comments to the right of the video, so you could scroll them while viewing instead of having comments below the video necessitating scrolling the video out of view while reading comments. I thought that toggle was relatively new too.

I feel like many Google UI's have been getting progressively worse... I used to watch my movies on google play..now i have no idea where they have gone... in the web i can still access via play, but phone app not there?! no idea what this company is doing left and right hand aren't in sync

I very much dislike the "glow" behind the videos now. Its constantly updating and very distracting.

I don't log into google, and I noticed the YouTube search suggestions were hot garbage.

Anyway, I was watching a logged in friend using YouTube, and realized their suggestions were equally irrelevant.

I wish people would mirror their videos somewhere that's more archival focused and less of a spam shovel.

That's not all, there are some channels where you can't even sort by most popular anymore.

From what I gather they're mostly music-related ones (perhaps in favour of YouTube's "most popular songs" playlists). Here's a random example: https://youtube.com/c/DomDolla/videos

Notice there's no option to even select any type of sort.

It makes a tiny bit of sense to use that YouTube playlist instead (for example artists may upload songs to a label's channel or something), but it's still very annoying.

You can try Invidious it's an open source alternative front-end to YouTube. https://docs.invidious.io/instances/

After archiving petabytes of inferior content, youtube is about worthless if you do not know what you are looking for. UI/UX/IQ/EQ do not apply.

Years ago, tcp/ip was cool to explore. Now, its just ad-bait for tabloid and low aptitude fodder populations.

At least on IOS, "Halt" is a good browser that blocks all youtube ads, beginning to end.

Much like grocery shopping, I only have a short list of content to view on youtube, with their algo recomendations and UI being moot for the past several years.

Even google places low quality results littered with ad-infested pages in the SERPs for inferior time suck pennies.

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Now there's "pull up for precise seeking" which doesn't do all that much but it's a new feature. And of course ambient mode which doesn't do much either.

While everyone is complaining sometimes the bottom of the video is cut off on mobile... this is particularly annoying in Chess videos if the bottom row of white pieces is cut off.

I use YouTube frequently, but I don’t consider myself much of a power user.

I have no idea how I’m “supposed to use” YouTube. I assume because I’m a fairly light user my confusion must be because it has some powerful tools/ interface for power users that confuses light users like me.

But then I try to understand how I should find what I’m looking for and it seems there’s no good / efficient way to use it where I don’t end up wondering why I can’t just click this or that to get what I want.

Am I crazy or did they remove 1.15x playback? That one seemed like the right mix of "I don't have 30 minutes" and not skewing the voices too much.

Does it matter? It seem to literally throw random videos it thinks you may like into the search results.

It is hard to process for me how could they screw simple things so bad.

My biggest peeve is how on the app, scrolling past a thumbnail removes it and starts playing a preview. So the title or whatever disappears, and instead I get to watch some person talk on mute. Then when I actually click the video, it starts from where I was in the preview, instead from the beginning, so I have to rewind since I obviously didn't catch anything from the small muted preview.

Always found it puzzling that it takes 5 clicks to remove a recommendation from the homepage. 1. dots menu 2. "not interested" 3. "tell us why" 4. I've already watched this video, check. 5. submit.

No doubt there's particular reasons for not doing so, but a "don't show me videos I've already seen" would be quite effective for my aims.

It's a tale as old as time: Programmer on HN complains about the removal of obscure menu items from a popular social media app

This one makes me really sad. Frequently I find myself wanting to look at the oldest video on a particular channel.

I feel like an old man in my own head, muttering, "I remember the Sort feature like it was yesterday!"

Same here. Since YT has been going downhill I've started downloading videos and storing them offline (no not on google drive for G to scan and remove in the future) in a couple spots because I've seen many items in my saved lists get removed or set to private over the years.

I've created a small macOS app to track YouTube channels without being distracted by the web UI: https://github.com/agentcooper/telik. Maybe some of you will find it useful.

I always feel dumb when using YouTube’s apps and website. It is probably the most non intuitive site I use

Despite having premium there is just no way to get rid of Shorts everywhere. It is the worst form of content which deliberately removes the seekbar & is not enough to convey anything meaningful. It's basically video reddit but minus the option delve further into the content.

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The funny thing is that Google brags about the science behind their UX and then they have complete garbage UX like Youtube and libs like material design. I also wonder if the Youtube mobile app testers are minors or have transparent fingers.

SOMEBODY pls write a firefox extension that allows you to simulate high engagement for any feature you pick. that way we could ascertain only the stuff we like about websites get's to stay and everything else goes by the wayside...

One recent change that I really hate is the way the video pops up and follows you down the page when you scroll down to look at comments. It blocks what I'm trying to look at! Very annoying.

What were they before? This post assumes a level of YouTube knowledge that I lack.

5 out of 12 recommends are future streams/premiers all from the same channel. I like the channel's content but 5/12 suggestions for something I can't even watch _right now_ is just a joke.

Seconded those pills make me want to commit murder... It's really annoying then there is randomly adjusting css on the home page, they have over done stuff in the name of mobile first.

Going to take this opportunity to ask if anyone else hasn't been able to find any playlists in YouTube search results? Whenever I filter for playlists, there is always nothing.

they keep making minor changes like this that invariably make things worse. For me it's the loss of controls for quickly removing individual videos from the Watch Later playlist.

Something to keep in mind is that YouTube does A/B testing, showing different interface design changes to different people and then comparing the stats later.

Freetube - https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube

Lately I often have trouble finding the date/time a youtube video was posted. Sometimes I find it when I open the description box, but not always.

Youtube has become almost unusable. recommendations are so bad. Because I'm politically independent I've been put into some kind of right-wing recommendation track... Now I'm getting recommended ignorant pwnd the lib shorts. I've pressed not interested and don't recommend this channel but it does nothing.

I really hate the endless short videos of youtube, instagram, and tiktok. I have no tiktok but they've essentially recreated the same crap on youtube.

The experience of YouTube has been pretty much completely ruined for me. The content of videos seems to have gone way down too. I think this may have coincided with the change in monetization strategy. Seems like the quality of recommendations has gone WAYYY down since then.

On the TV app it is nuts now. Only 4 rows of recommendations, and 5 videos per row. Like a 1000% reduction in possible recommendations. No idea why.

The Watch later UX is atrocious too :

- Adding : hover the video 1000ms to reveal the button

- Removing : 2 clicks away under a menu

Why hide the 2 most frequent actions? Do you even do user testing?

I wish people would use Twitch more to make it a more viable Youtube alternative. Amazon doesn't have user hostile attitude like Google.

Yes, and the cure for us users is : yt-dlp

I don't even do that. I use mpv + yt-dlp + SponsorBlock plugin: `script-opts=ytdl_hook-ytdl_path=yt-dlp`

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Noticed this UI change today as well and it’s awful. Makes me feel less bad that I canceled premium and won’t be using YT anymore.

Waddya mean?

https://postimg.cc/Wq3t4Fxn

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They've also hidden away the "save to playlist" button, making it extra clicks to do.

What filter/sorter was removed?

YouTube is/was a really good YouTube. It should stop trying to be a second-rate TikTok.

It is even worse for a music artist, on the Videos tab there is no sort at all.

Why even worse? I use youtube a LOT and I don't particularly dislike it.

Install LibRedirect and you never need to visit youtube.com again.

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Needs New Management.... thats the first step. :)

how else did you filter uploaded videos? i don't remember what the other options are. also, the new UI is faster on my old 10 yo machine.

Imho, Freetube is the best way to use YouTube.

I hope some from YouTube sees this feedback

it only ever gets worse

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