YouTube Moved the Subscriptions Tab Into Home. Expect Fewer Subscription Feed Views

What changed in the YouTube app on October 22?

YouTube removed the Subscriptions tab from the bottom bar of its Android and iOS apps and put it inside Home. 9to5Google reported the change on October 22: the tab had sat fourth in the bottom bar since 2017. It is now named Subs and sits second in a top bar on the Home tab, right after Home. YouTube announced it in a Help Community post titled “New ways to explore YouTube from your Home page”.

The same top bar now holds Live and Music. Android Authority adds that a Movies & TV tab shows up only for viewers with an active paid subscription to a service on YouTube. The bottom bar shrinks to four items: Home, Shorts, Create and You, per iGeeksBlog. The side menu is gone too.

The rollout is gradual. YouTube has not said when every US account will get the new layout, so some of your viewers still see the old one. YouTube has tried this before. YouTube tested moving Subscriptions to the top of the app in May 2026 and confirmed it was an experiment.

What are custom feeds, and what did they replace?

Custom feeds are Home tabs a viewer builds by typing a prompt. They launched the same day as the Subs move. A viewer taps + at the top of Home and describes what they want. YouTube saves it as a tab that keeps filling with new videos. Android Authority reports that the old topic chips on mobile are being replaced by custom feeds.

The YouTube Help page on custom feeds sets the rules:

• Up to 3 feeds on a free account and up to 8 on YouTube Premium.
• The viewer must be signed in, use English, and have watch and search history on.
• It works in the United States only for now, and not on tablets.
• A prompt expires after 30 days without use.
• Feeds are private. Other viewers cannot see or find them.
• Watches from a custom feed go into normal watch history and can shape the main Home feed.

The same Help page says a custom feed “behaves like the Home feed”. A view from it counts toward your watch time and monetization as usual. YouTube adds that it is “continuing to closely monitor the feature's impact on views, watch time, and revenue”. I covered what YouTube first showed of custom feeds in September in custom feeds and Ask YouTube.

Will fewer views come from the Subscriptions feed?

Most likely yes, but your subscribers will not stop watching. The Subs feed now takes one more tap from anywhere outside Home, and some people will not make that tap. This is my reading. YouTube has published no numbers on the move, and I have not seen any channel data yet.

Most subscribers did not find you through that feed anyway. In a Creator Insider interview, YouTube's Todd Beaupré said that most channels get “about maybe a 10% or less click-through rate” from subscribers, even on their best videos. So 9 in 10 subscribers who see a new upload in that feed already pass on it. We break that number down in does YouTube test videos on subscribers first.

Home now decides more of your subscriber views. Home does not list your uploads in order. YouTube ranks it for each viewer, one video at a time, as explained in how YouTube recommendations work. A subscriber who watches you often should keep seeing you there. A subscriber who only watched once two years ago will see you less, because the old one-tap list no longer catches them. The table separates what is known from what I expect.

The likely winners are channels whose fans watch often, because Home already shows them those channels. The likely losers are channels with a large subscriber list and a small active audience. Those channels leaned on the old tab to reach people Home had stopped picking. For how Home treats smaller, focused channels, read how the YouTube Browse feed treats niche creators.

Which YouTube Analytics traffic sources should you watch for four weeks?

Watch Browse features, the notification sources, and views split by subscription status. Together they show whether fans stopped watching or now find you somewhere else. The definitions come from YouTube Help on traffic sources. YouTube counts both Home and subscriptions traffic under Browse features. A subscriber who now finds you on Home instead of in Subs still counts under Browse features.

How to run the four-week check

1. Open YouTube Studio, go to Analytics, and click Advanced mode. YouTube Help on Advanced mode confirms you can filter by geography and subscription status there.
2. Filter to the United States and to mobile phones. The move only hit the US mobile app, so other traffic will hide the effect.
3. Set a baseline window of September 24 to October 21, 2026. That is the 28 days before the move.
4. Compare it with October 22 to November 18, 2026, the first 28 days after.
5. Open Traffic source and note views for Browse features and both notification sources. Click into Browse features to see if your Studio lists the subscriptions feed on its own line.
6. Switch the filter to subscription status. Compare subscribed views in both windows.

If subscribed views hold while the Subs line falls, your fans moved to Home and nothing is lost. If subscribed views fall too, your subscriber list was propping up views that Home will not replace. Upload timing and topic shift these numbers every month, so compare a few videos of the same type, not one upload.

How do you show up in viewers' custom feeds?

Make each video clearly about one thing a viewer would type. YouTube has published no method for custom feeds, so the table below lists my best guesses, each marked with what it rests on. Two things are known. Viewers describe “the topic, channels, or vibe” they want, per 9to5Google's quote of YouTube's post. The feed is also personal, built from the viewer's own history.

I would bet most on the last row. YouTube builds a feed from the viewer's own watch history, so you get into it the same way you get onto Home: people who care about the topic watch your videos and keep watching. Titles and tags matter less than that.

What still drives YouTube notifications to subscribers?

The bell and YouTube's own picks still drive notifications, the same as before the move. The YouTube Help page on notifications sets out the rules, and none of the October coverage says they changed:

• A new subscriber gets Personalized notifications by default. They only get every upload if they switch the bell to All.
• All notifications covers long-form uploads and live streams. Shorts get only some personalized pushes.
• For Personalized, YouTube looks at the viewer's watch history, how often they watch your channel, how popular the video is, and how often they open notifications.
• Not every upload results in a notification, even for subscribers.
• Channels set as made for kids send no notifications at all.

Notifications depend on the same things Home uses. Viewers who watch you often get more pushes. Ask viewers to turn on the bell when you have a reason, like a weekly show on a set day. The Subs move makes the bell a little more useful, because a push skips the extra tap.

What else changed in YouTube discovery in October?

Ask YouTube opened up the same month. On October 12, YouTube said Ask YouTube is available to US viewers across web, mobile and TVs. A day later, 9to5Google reported it is no longer a Premium feature. YouTube also added a test on October 15 that shows Ask YouTube answers above some desktop search results, per The Keyword.

In October, YouTube moved more discovery into places it ranks for each viewer: Home, custom feeds and AI answers. The list of uploads in time order got harder to reach.

How OutlierKit helps when Home does more of the work

When Home carries more of your subscriber views, your choice of topic matters more. Home shows your fans the videos they want to watch. A topic only you cared about will mostly get views from the Subs tab, which fewer people now open.

I build OutlierKit to find the videos in your niche that got several times their channel's usual views. Those are the topics viewers already chose, so your next video performs with your own subscribers and with the people Home is testing it on. The manual version of that method is in how to find outlier videos.

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