What you need to know
- YouTube is testing a new change for its "Explore" tab.
- The tests seek to remove the Explore page, opting for a navigational panel for it on the app's home page.
- Early looks show a few clear categories for users to jump into quickly.
YouTube is experimenting with a change on its Android app for its "Explore" section.
As it stands right now, opening the YouTube app on your Android device and tapping "Explore" sends you to a dedicated page. This page shows you recommended videos and areas to explore new types of content. Courtesy of a post from the Google News Telegram account, it looks like YouTube is interested in changing how its Explore section works for Android.
As the post explains, the Explore page gets the boot and would instead open up a navigational panel from the side. In this panel, the photo provided shows that things are broken down into clear categories. The navigational panel includes Trending, Music, Movies, Live, Gaming, and Sports. It's quite the change while also keeping its core categories in place, considering how the Explore page currently works on its live build.
It also seems that YouTube has incorporated a way during its testing to make this panel work with a phone's gestures feature. Holding down the left side and swiping across should reveal the panel. This new navigational panel only functions from the app's home page.
Seeing as YouTube is one of the best apps for enjoying content on Android, continuing to innovate and making its existing features better is always a priority. That said, it's not clear how users may react to the change. We've yet to see this feature on our devices, but it's apparently not the only change YouTube has been testing in an attempt to replace the Explore page.
Just last month, YouTube brought in updates for looping a video chapter and testing for its UI on Android. Premium subscribers are also able to text a new video zoom feature that lets users zoom into a video up to 8x, although this text is only available until September 1.
