Removed 'Subscriptions' from the App's Bottom Menu — Now It's a Left Swipe

⚡ The Gist in 5 Seconds

• YouTube has rolled out a new app interface for Android and iOS: the 'Subscriptions' tab is gone from the bottom menu.
• It now lives at the top of the screen, and you can reach it by swiping left on the Home tab.
• The bottom bar now features Shorts and 'Create'; the 'Today' and 'Live' filters have disappeared from the subscriptions feed.
• The old subscriptions feed view is still available — via a long press on the app icon.

🔍 What Happened

YouTube has rolled out a new mobile app interface for Android and iOS on its servers. The 'Subscriptions' tab, which had sat in the bottom bar for nearly ten years, has vanished from there. Its place was taken by Shorts and the 'Create' button. Subscriptions themselves have moved to the top of the interface, and to open them you need to swipe left on the Home screen.

It's not just the navigation that changed. The 'Today' and 'Live' category filters were removed from the subscriptions feed — the very ones that helped quickly find fresh and unwatched content. Instead, users land in a general feed whose order is determined by algorithms. According to Habr, Android Authority links the fierce reaction to the fact that the feature was only enabled on servers now — even though it was announced last month.

A workaround remains: on Android and iOS, you can long-press the app icon and select the subscriptions feed option from the menu that appears. It works, but it's no longer one tap — it's two, and you have to know about the trick in advance.

🧠 Our Take

Look at the logic of the reshuffle. People open the app to watch specific creators — and now the most prominent spot holds Shorts, an endless stream, and the create button. What bothers me here isn't the move itself, but that 'Subscriptions' was removed in favor of elements that monetize better. Our assessment: this isn't about ergonomics, it's about where attention goes.

For the market, it's a signal that even a giant like YouTube is willing to break a familiar pattern to drive engagement with short videos. Usually such changes are tested on a portion of the audience, but here it hit everyone at once — hence the wave of posts on Reddit. For the user, the cost is concrete: two extra actions every time they want to check on their creators, plus the vanished filters.

Who wins is clear: Shorts and the ads around them. Who loses: those who rely on subscriptions instead of recommendations. Judging by the criticism in the discussions, the service's priorities are shifting toward passive viewing. This isn't the end of YouTube, but it's a clear shift in who the company considers its primary user.

⚠️ What We Don't Know

The report includes neither the app version number, nor the exact rollout start date, nor the percentage of users affected. The claim about server-side enablement is Android Authority's assessment, not an official YouTube comment. It's not certain the interface reached everyone at once: some devices may still have the old layout, and that's worth checking yourself.

Prediction: within a quarter, YouTube will add quick access to subscriptions in the bottom bar in at least one form — either as a setting or as a separate icon.

Source: Habr