What you need to know
- YouTube TV gets a new shortcut to make its users switch between channels easily.
- It is dubbed “Last Channel Shortcut” and can be triggered by pressing the “Start or OK” button on your TV remote.
- The YouTube TV app on the necessary animation when triggered, and it works across Live TV, videos on demand, and DVR content.
Starting today (Feb. 16), YouTube TV is adding a new shortcut for its viewers to make it easy for them to access the previous channel they were watching. It is dubbed “Last Channel Shortcut” and has started rolling out to all YouTube TV subscribers.
In a Reddit community post, the feature and its corresponding rollout (via 9to5Google) have been announced. The feature is said to have been in the works for quite some time now. The Last Channel Shortcut, as the name suggests, helps users to switch back to the channel they were watching on YouTube TV.
The feature works quite similarly to what we are accustomed to with our TV remotes when we usually switch back and forth between the channels. While there is a dedicated button on the traditional TV remote to watch the previously watched channel, YouTube TV viewers must long press (press and hold) the “Select/OK” buttons on their remote to utilize the feature.
Users have to bear in mind that they should’ve played at least one or two videos to switch between them with the new shortcut, explains the community manager in the above Reddit post.
The Last Channel Shortcut will work not just for channels on YouTube TV but also for Live videos, video on demand, and DVR content. 9to5 notes that when users press the new shortcut, the screen showcases an animation accompanied by a message indicating how the button works and displays a “You went back to your last channel.”
The feature was initially tested in December 2023 and disappeared weeks later, only to appear again on some Roku devices, notes 9to5Google. Regardless, the feature is now rolling out across all YouTube TV apps, and we recommend you stay up to date by installing the latest version of the app.
In other news, YouTube TV just crossed eight million subscribers early this month. YouTube also achieved one billion hours of average viewership on TV.
