Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Many moons ago, Google rolled out YouTube Premium family plans and hooked me. My husband and I looked at that subscription’s pricing, briefly weighed the pros and cons of paying for a “free” service, and quickly decided that it was a million times worth it just for the ad-free experience.
Over the years, with Google worsening its ad-riddled experience on the free YouTube tier, I’ve thanked my lucky stars for my Premium subscription. But while Google keeps adding and testing useless and sometimes even anti-user measures on the platform, I find myself sighing in frustration every time I check the app because I just want one new feature. One. That’s it. Subscription folders.
Would you like folders to organize your YouTube subscriptions?
102 votes
For the love of everything sacred, let me organize my YouTube subs!
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Hear me out, Google. I love YouTube. As a matter of fact, I love it so much that I’ve paid for it for years and use it every day on my phone, my computer, and my Google TV Streamer. It’s the streaming subscription I use the most and the platform where I watch the most stuff — way more than my Plex server, Amazon Prime Video, or Canal Plus (local French cable for live sports).
YouTube is part of my daily work, but also my most interesting entertainment. Tech, stand-up comedy, music, sports, food, travel, interior design, and more and more. I can go from watching a new Android Authority video to catching up on the summary of Real Madrid’s last game to hearing a guy explain to me why popcorn ceilings make houses look dated (even though I don’t have popcorn ceilings) to binging a few Taskmaster videos (that show is so hilariously pointless!) to planning my next trip to Budapest to laughing at Gianmarco Soresi’s latest crowd work in one sitting. I love this randomness and variety — sometimes.
My YouTube subs are a mess because I’m interested in a wide variety of topics and videos. No sorting method can tame that mess.
Other times, I just want to dig into one topic. Just one genre of video. Maybe a new Pixel 9a just launched and I want to see what all the tech reviewers are saying about it. Maybe I’m just in the mood for stand-up comedy. Or maybe I’m catching up on all the Eurovision national finals and new song releases. I just want those videos, but the problem is that I can’t simply filter them.
Because I watch so many eclectic and different genres of videos, my subscriptions are a big mess. The alphabetical order is pointless for me. There’s no logic in going from Android Authority to Andy Cooks, to the Australian Open, to Britain’s Got Talent. Or from Jelle’s Marble Runs to JerryRigEverything, then Jimmy Carr and Jolly. These are worlds apart. I can’t even imagine what a mess my subscription list would be if I used YouTube Music, but I’ve thankfully stuck with Spotify for many reasons — one of them being the ability to keep my music interests separate from my YouTube video interests. No alphabetical order could save the horror show if I did, though.
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
I’ve also tried the “New activity” and “Most relevant” sorting methods on the Android app, but those don’t work for me either. And let’s not talk about YouTube on TVs! That’s the biggest screen I watch on, the one I spend the most hours in front of, and Google has decided that subscription sorting there is… “whatever goes.” I think it’s attempting to sort my channels by relevance, but oh, the times I’ve missed some cool videos for days or weeks because the algorithm didn’t surface them or the channel was buried a million layers deep…
I don’t want to keep missing out on great videos because the algorithm didn’t surface them for me. I just want folders so I can dig into one topic and catch up on all of it.
I just want folders. Or tags. Or some sort — any sort — of manual organization that doesn’t rely on the algorithm overlords. My brain loves organization and categorization; that’s how it works, that’s how it’s always worked when it comes to tech. I never had a pile of icons on my Windows desktop; I always had neat folders with everything exactly where it should be. Maybe that’s my age speaking, but I grew up in the golden age of computers where file browsers, folders, and sorting methods were king, and we didn’t rely on some random machine somewhere to decide for us and shove its choice down our collective throats. I love that level of control, and I want it in my YouTube app.
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
So, Google, please listen. I’ve indulged your push for Shorts, your like/dislike changes, your random layout experiments, your silly banners to tell me about Members-only videos (no, thanks), and your constant gesture changes (am I swiping up or down to fullscreen?). I’ve gone through them all and still kept paying for YouTube. So, please, Google, just indulge the heavy users like me, those who have hundreds of subscriptions and just as many varied interests, those who spend hours on your platform and keep your user metrics high, those who know what they want to watch and aren’t relying on whatever pops up first on the home page. Just add folders. Ok? That’s it. No newfangled AI feature, no Gemini integration, nothing fancy. Just folders, like Xerox had in 1981 before I was even born. Alright? Thanks.
