YouTube is finally loosening the reins on channel customization, and its been a long time coming.
According to Tome Leung, YouTube’s director of product management, YouTube is “launching the ability to customize your channel’s look and feel directly within YouTube Studio.” Soon, YouTube will release complete channel layout customization so creators can better reflect their brand and identity.
Additionally, we can expect a reduced Featured Channels tab and the ability to change “basic info to match your creative style.” Likely, Leung is referring to the About page on channels, which usually features a barren design.
When is the channel customization coming?
The launch of these channel customization features is unclear, as Leung only stated this update will drop in “the future.”
Despite the unclear release date, we already see one of the aspects discussed. Previously, creators could use the Featured Channels tool to pick channels to feature on their channel. It’s a neat feature, but it was only viewable for desktop users. Those on mobile couldn’t see the column.
Now, the Featured Channels column is a Channels tabs that comes alongside the Home, Videos, Playlists, Community, and About sections on Youtube channels. So now desktop, iOS and Andriod users can see the feature.
Creator Mixes makes YouTube’s algorithm work for creators
Creator Mixes was also announced. They are “algorithmically generated playlist of any given channel’s content.” The feature will appear in the Up Next column. “If you’re watching a given video, we nominate, like any other video we might recommend, a Creator Mix, which would appear as ‘Mix – Name of Channel,’” said Sam, a member of the platform’s recommendations team.
Sam claims Creator Mixes perform better than playlists made by creators or users because “those playlists are static, and are the same for every user, whereas a Creator Mix is tailored for each viewer.” Mixes intend to show viewers a snapshot of what a Youtube channel has to offer and not contain videos a viewer has already watched.
As we stated before, we do not know when most of these features will be out. We just have to wait for YouTube to update us.