YouTube’s redesign brings one annoying change, but I found a workaround

YouTube is going all in on Custom Feeds, with a big home screen redesign that’s equal parts confusing and infuriating. In the process of creating prompt-based, short-lived suggestion feeds, we’ve lost our dear friend, the Subscriptions tab. Instead, we now see the “Subs” section at the top of the Home page.

As someone who uses YouTube as their preferred binge-watching platform, relying on a curated list of only the finest YouTube essay creators, I’m not exactly happy about this. Hopefully, YouTube listens to our collected pleas and corrects course. But even if it doesn’t, I’ve already found a workaround that lets me keep my old Subscriptions tab.

I usually switch between YouTube’s home screen and my Subscriptions feed. I have a curated list of creators that I keep culling from time to time. I open YouTube, and my first task is how quickly I can escape the Shorts section (which I’ve already limited as much as I can). After I get bored with the home screen recommendations, I switch to the Subscriptions tab that feels more at home.

My thumb just naturally gravitates towards the Subscriptions tab, but now, that’s replaced by the Plus button.

If I want to go to my Subscriptions, I now have to go to the top of the Home tab, where several new sections live, the first of which, confusingly, is just called “Home.” Right next to it is the new Subs section that finally shows videos and shorts from my subscriptions. There’s also a new, more unreliable option in the form of a swipe gesture. Because everything in the new Home page is a tab, you can just swipe left or right to switch between the feeds. So far, every time I have done this, it has been accidental, never on purpose.

And it’s not just that YouTube moved the Subscriptions tab. The new “Subs” screen is objectively worse. It’s missing the Filters section at the top that many YouTube users (including me) have come to appreciate.

The Today filter is basically the only way that I can see newly uploaded videos from channels in one single view (the default Subscriptions page shows Shorts at the top, and stuffs recommended videos right below the first section). But with the new Subs view, all of that is gone. You are at the mercy of the default Subs view, which includes suggestions,

At least for now, I’ve found a way to quickly access the old Subscriptions tab. It comes down to the magic of Android’s app actions.

Tap and hold the YouTube app icon on the home screen, go to the Actions section, and tap Subscriptions. You can also tap the Plus button to permanently add the shortcut to the home screen. Doing this opens the old Subscriptions page with the filters at the top. I hope this isn’t just a glitch, and it stays like this.

I also have an alternative in the form of NewPipe. I have a separate subscriptions list in NewPipe where I only have talks and lectures that I want to watch in peace. If things get worse on YouTube, I can always transfer my list over to NewPipe. The downside is that this subscription is local to my Android device and doesn’t sync to my TV or my Mac.

It might just be me, but it seems like YouTube’s Home screen is becoming less and less about videos. While I hold my subscriptions dearly, I also rely on YouTube’s stellar recommendation engine to help me discover more creators and interesting videos.

But these days, the Home screen is less about showcasing long-form videos and more about carousel posts, polls, shorts (oh, so many shorts), and promoting YouTube’s live streams. And that’s on YouTube Premium — I shudder to think what goes on with the free YouTube plan.

Seems like Custom Feeds is YouTube’s answer to this, which is currently only live in the US, and I’m not sure when I’ll get it in India. But I’m in no hurry, honestly.

Custom Feeds replace the topics tabs at the top. Free users can create three custom feeds at a time, and YouTube Premium users get up to eight slots. It’s all dependent on your text prompt and YouTube’s AI engines. You can create a feed for a topic you like, and YouTube will recommend videos in the feed, refreshing them as needed.

While it sounds interesting, and I can see myself creating a feed for F1, car reviews, Buddhism talks, and so on, it’s still not something truly in my control, and it’s not a subscription feed.

For now, I’m left with an increasingly confusing interface, and a shortcut to the old Subscription tab that I actually like. I’ll hold on to it for as long as I can.