YouTube Overhauls Search Filters With New Design

YouTube is updating its search filters menu with a new look and feel that comes with a dedicated Shorts toggle, renamed options, and the removal of two underperforming filters. The changes are an effort to improve the quality of results and adjust for the way people actually watch videos today.

Early testers are already using the new design on desktop and mobile. If you use filters to quickly narrow in on the right clip, some of your muscle memory will need to adjust—and some smarter defaults will be there to help along the way.

What’s New in YouTube’s Updated Search Filters Menu

The biggest new addition is a filter for Shorts, which appears under the Type heading. You can now tell YouTube with one tap to show only vertical, under-60-second videos or to remain faithful to long-form results. It’s a timely split, given the growth of short video.

Two labels are getting renamed. Sort By is changed to Prioritize, and View Count becomes Popularity. YouTube says the new wording better reflects how results are ordered—less about rule-bound sorting, and more about signals from users that they find helpful.

Two filters are being removed: Last Hour and Rating. These were not behaving as expected and frequently causing complaints, the company says. You’ll also see that Upload Date has taken up station in the middle of the menu now, part of a larger reshuffle intended to reduce hunting and pecking.

On desktop, you’ll find the Filters button in the top right after you search; on mobile, it’s buried inside the three-dot menu at the top right. The redesigns are available for both platforms.

Why Shorts Has a Dedicated Toggle in Search Filters

Short-form is not just a side project any longer. YouTube has claimed that Shorts attracts more than 2 billion logged-in users a month, and industry tracking pegs figures as high as 70 billion daily views at peak times. The distinction between Shorts and long-form in search recognizes that viewers come with different intent—quick tip vs. deep dive—and on-demand immediacy.

That means, in practical terms, a search for “Pixel battery tips” can now instantly multiply: tap Shorts and you get rapid-fire hacks; keep it long-form and you might have 15 minutes on how to optimize your phone. As audience paths become cleaner, anticipate that creators will optimize titles and thumbnails accordingly.

The End of ‘Last Hour’ and ‘Rating’ Filters on YouTube

Diehard breaking-news chasers will grumble, but for years the filter was notoriously thin and erratic. New uploads don’t always get indexed immediately, and the correlation between recency and relevance frequently led to thin results.

Rating has been a fossil for years, since the platform jettisoned 5-star scores in favor of likes and other satisfaction signals. A “rating” proxy no longer told a reliable story, with public dislike counts obscured and surveys, comments, and watch time playing a bigger role.

What to Prioritize and Popularity Signaling Explained

Renaming Sort By to Prioritize suggests YouTube is not interested in a purely chronological or numeric list; it’s doubling down on blended ranking. The company’s search and discovery guidance has long emphasized watch time, click-through rate, and viewer satisfaction as the primary metrics.

(Popularity, meanwhile, reads the same as widespread views.) It probably folds in engagement quality (how long you watch a video, or how many likes, comments, and shares there are), not just crowning whatever has the highest counter. That aligns more with how audiences now judge value.

What the New Layout Means for Your YouTube Search Flow

With Last Hour gone, for the latest uploads you’ll rely on Upload Date, using Today or This Week.

To deal with current events like software updates or game patches, pairing Upload Date and Prioritize: Relevance should help make the results more focused but not starve for news.

And when you’re dealing with shopping research (swap to Popularity), the Shorts toggle can help differentiate between short unboxings and full benchmarks/testing/reviews for when you need consensus picks fast (headphones, webcams, mechanical keyboards, and so on). Small adjustment, but it reduces a lot of the “wrong format” friction that many have.

Why This Matters for Viewers and Creators on YouTube

Cleaner controls are better for viewers, reducing the amount they need to pogo-stick between formats and making it more likely they find the right video on a first try. With YouTube reaching approximately 95% of U.S. teens, according to the Pew Research Center—and billions of people globally using the site—small efficiency gains add up at that scale.

Creators should see an easier-to-understand split between Shorts and long-form, which could also help them match up content with their viewers. And if your 30-second how-to takes off in Shorts, the new filter makes sure it arrives at impatient searchers. If your documentary stream is organized in chapters and timestamps, Popularity + Relevance may reward high average view time more than a clickbaity video.

The update won’t rewrite YouTube’s ranking formula in any way, but it is another way the interface now better syncs with modern viewing habits. Those—fewer, not entirely ambiguous labels; fewer underpowered filters; and a first-class Shorts toggle—combine to make the search experience feel more like something you meant to do rather than an accident.