YouTube’s finally adding more separation between shorts and regular videos

YouTube is updating its website and app so Shorts, live streams, and regular videos each have their own tab on a creator’s channel, instead of being thrown together in a single list (via 9to5Google). In a support post, the company says the change is based on user feedback, and that it’ll “make it easier for viewers to discover the kinds of content they’re most interested in when exploring a creator’s channel page.”

Before the update, if you went to a channel you’d see a single tab labeled “videos,” which showed you a list of all the user’s uploads, including shorts, live streams, and regular-length videos. While there is a filter that lets you change which format the list shows, it gets reset every time you leave the page, so when you come back everything will be mixed together again.

The change giving each type of content its own tab started rolling out on Thursday, and should make its way to more users “in the coming weeks.”

The one downside to this approach is that it could make things a bit harder for completionists, who want to watch everything a channel puts out, and enjoyed having it all on one screen. For me personally, though, it’s a blessing — lots of the creators I follow will create clips of their regular content, and upload it as shorts, and it was always a bit of a hassle to switch to the videos tab, scroll through a few thumbnails, and then remember that I have to go back to the top to turn the filter on. It’ll also help users who just want to watch shorts, who don’t want to have to filter out regular videos.

For Youtube and creators, that’s good news: the company recently announced that, starting next year, creators in its Partner Program will get a cut of the revenue generated from ads that play in front of shorts. That could give the platform a leg up over TikTok, which currently pays creators via a creators fund, and lets them make some of their own money via tips.