YouTube Subscriptions is leaving the bottom bar of the YouTube app on Android and iPhone. In a post on its official community forum this week, YouTube said it is “kicking off a series of updates to shape a more seamless Home experience”, and the most visible one moves the feed of channels you follow into a “Subs” tab along the top of the Home screen, right after Home itself.
That leaves four items in the bottom bar, namely Home, Shorts, the Create button and You. If you open YouTube mainly to catch new uploads from the creators, preachers, news channels and comedians you follow, the habit of tapping the bottom-right of the screen is about to stop working, and the new route is one tap on Home and a second on Subs.
| What moves | Subscriptions, from the bottom bar to a Subs tab at the top of Home |
|---|---|
| New bottom bar | Home, Shorts, Create, You |
| Apps affected | YouTube for Android and iOS |
| Custom feeds | Signed-in users in the US, in English, first |
| Custom feed limit | 3 for free users, 8 for YouTube Premium |
| Nigeria rollout date | Not confirmed |
Subs now shares the top row with feeds you describe in your own words
The reason for the shuffle is a new feature called custom feeds. You tap the plus sign at the top of Home, describe what you want to watch, and YouTube builds a separate feed from that prompt, which then sits as its own tab beside Home and Subs. YouTube says free users can keep up to three active custom feeds and Premium members up to eight. Its help page on custom feeds says you must be signed in with watch and search history turned on, and that the feature currently works in English in the United States.
So the custom feeds part won’t reach Nigerian accounts straight away. YouTube said more countries will follow but hasn’t given dates, and it hasn’t said when the Subs move will arrive on every phone either. The idea is close to what Meta did with Facebook’s Your algorithm, where you type what you want more or less of in your feed.
Getting back to your subscriptions in two taps
When the new layout reaches your phone, open YouTube, stay on Home, and tap Subs in the row of tabs at the top. Nothing in YouTube’s post suggests your subscriptions themselves change, only where the feed lives. Keep the YouTube app updated from the Play Store or App Store, since layout changes like this tend to arrive gradually rather than on every phone on the same day.
If you watch on a tight data plan, the new layout doesn’t change how much a video costs you, but more tabs of suggested videos on Home means more thumbnails loading before you find what you came for. Going straight to Subs keeps you closer to the uploads you actually want, and our guide on finding what’s eating your MTN, Airtel or Glo data covers the YouTube settings that keep video data in check.
