YouTube has announced the rollout of a new update that will replace the Trending tab with a new section called ‘Explore’. The new Explore tab is accented with a compass-shaped icon. That occupies the second position on the bottom bar UI, taking the place of the previously used Trending tab. It also still contains trending content, tucked behind an associated button at the top of the Explore page.
The button takes its place at the top of the page, alongside six other buttons. Those take users to dedicated “destination pages” labeled appropriately as Music, Gaming, News, Movies & Shows, Fashion & Beauty, and Learning. More destination pages will be added over time. But those, as is implied, lead to curated videos associated with the topic found on the button.
Scrolling down through the Explore section reveals content from the prospective sections marked by buttons. Users will also see “Creator on the Rise” and “Artist on the Rise” sections just ahead of the others. New creators and artists are showcased there, providing them with a wider audience and introducing users to new media they may not have discovered otherwise.
This is part of a wider push to organize YouTube
Now, the push by the Google-owned streaming video service to organize content more efficiently and present new content to users isn’t new. YouTube has well over a billion subscribers and billions of videos are streamed on a daily basis. The sheer number of videos necessitates a drive to make that content easier to explore.
Another recent change made by the company toward that goal was the addition of channel filtering under the Subscriptions tab. In effect, the feature lets users click a content provider or channel they’re subscribed to without losing their list of channels completely. Those remain at the top of the page. That, in turn, makes it easy to switch between channels and see what video uploads may have been missed.
The new Explore tab fulfills a similar purpose for end-users. Namely, it gives end-users a dedicated space for discovering not just content they may have missed that’s trending. The Explore tab will also allow the discovery of content that’s new. That content or its creators may be growing in popularity but would otherwise miss being put forward as a suggestion for any number of reasons.
The YouTube Explore tab is rolling out now
Users should already be seeing the new Explore tab in YouTube’s interface rolling out now. That’s for both Android and iOS, according to Google’s announcement. But Google does indicate the feature has been in the works since 2018. So the search giant’s had plenty of time to perfect the new UI and it is rolling out to everybody.
That doesn’t mean it’s going to show up immediately for everybody. Since YouTube is a global app, installed on effectively every Android device, the update will take a “few days” to arrive. Users will need to navigate to the Google Play Store on their Android device to check for an update just like any other app.