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YouTube recently announced five new features for premium subscribers, including a button to jump ahead to the most interesting part of a video, picture-in-picture for YouTube Shorts, and a new conversational AI. While I appreciate the innovation, I have to say, these features don't excite me. YouTube, if you really want me to fork over my money, how about adding these things to the mix instead?
Where’s the Shorts "Off" Button?
I'd pay good money to get YouTube without Shorts. Those bite-sized videos are deliberately engineered to be as engaging as possible while being short enough to make you feel like they don't take up much time. Before you know it, you’ve wasted a couple of hours watching content of very questionable value. No thank you, YouTube, I don't need another massive time sink eating up hours of my life without me realizing it. I already have TikTok for that.
There used to be a button to turn off Shorts from your feed, but now, Google’s removed that option from the settings. There are still a couple of workarounds to disable Shorts, but they are either incredibly inconvenient or only last for a short while before they come right back.
Since I don't just use YouTube for entertainment but also for education and learning new skills, it would be nice if I didn't have to worry about getting sucked into a Shorts rabbit hole every time I opened the app. If I have to fork over some money to get the Shorts off button back, then so be it.
What’s With the Janky Comment Translation?
YouTube has a comment translation feature, but I’ll bet you didn't know that since it hardly ever works. It's particularly irritating for me because I like to watch Korean YouTube channels, and it's incredibly hard to let other people’s opinions influence your own when said opinions are in a whole other language.
Half the times I’ve tried to use YouTube’s Translate feature, something’s gone wrong. It’s either the "Translate" button doesn't appear or clicking it does nothing at all. To make matters worse, you can't copy comments in the YouTube Mobile app, so I can't just copy-paste into Google Translate as a workaround. Even when it does work perfectly, hitting the translate button for each comment gets old fast. I’d much rather be able to translate all the comments at once.
As it stands, YouTube’s comment translation feature is wasting away. I’d rather Google fix it up and re-release it as a premium feature that actually works, and I wouldn't mind paying.
Give Me More Stats, Stats, Stats!
We already get a little bit of data in the “Time Watched” feature, which shows you how much YouTube you’ve watched in the last week, compiles that information into a nice graph, and calculates the percentage change compared to the previous week.
As a premium feature, YouTube could repeat this, but on steroids. I want to know when I subscribed to a channel, how many times I’ve watched a video, and how many hours I’ve spent watching a specific channel. Who are my most-watched YouTubers? Where are they from? And what kind of content interests me the most?
Basically, I want to know everything about how I use YouTube. Bonus points if YouTube can compile all that information into an end-of-year recap like Spotify does with Spotify Wrapped.
Let Me Search Within Channels More Easily
Sometimes, I get nostalgic and like to rewatch specific videos from some of my favorite YouTubers. The only problem is that finding the right video can be a bit of a hassle. There are two ways I go about it, neither of them efficient.
The first way is by searching for whatever keywords I can remember in combination with the YouTuber’s name. For example: “Mr. Beast train.” If that doesn't work, my second strategy is to head over to the YouTube channel and browse their entire video catalog. Depending on the number of videos that channel has, I could end up spending several minutes searching for a single video.
All this stress could be eliminated by including a new “Channel” filter in the search bar or, better yet, allowing us to search within channels not only on the desktop web version of YouTube. That way, you can always find whatever video you need in less time.
Give Me the Master Key to My Recommended Feed
YouTube’s algorithm is supposed to be this super-intelligent program that can suggest interesting content based on my watch history. However, looking at my recommendation feed these days gives me plenty of reason to doubt that.
There are a few tools for managing your recommended feed, like the “Not Interested” and “Don't Recommend This Channel” buttons, but they are woefully insufficient. While they may work well for removing a specific video, they don't do enough to calibrate your feed properly.
My suggestion is to add a Recommendation tuner on YouTube Premium where you can select examples of videos that you love across different categories. YouTube will then use that information to tune your feed.
The benefit of this is that you can explore different kinds of videos without any fear that they will take over your feed, and you can easily reset your YouTube anytime the algorithm goes off the rails.
YouTube has been trying really hard to get me to sign up for Premium, but considering its current perks, I just don’t see the appeal. This might change if my suggestions are incorporated, but until then, bring on the ads!
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