How to filter your Subscriptions feed in the official YouTube app for iOS

filter YouTube subscriptions

You probably don’t have enough time to watch every single video in the Subscriptions feed on YouTube. In order to make your backlog less intimidating and help you catch up with your favorite video creators, Google now lets you filter YouTube subscriptions via a new Topics option available in the native YouTube app for iPhone and iPad, and we show you how.

Bringing order to your Subscriptions feed

You can order your unwatched videos from channels you subscribe to by tapping on one of the topics that appear below the top row of followed channels on the Subscriptions tab.

TUTORIAL: How to browser related YouTube videos in fullscreen mode

In addition to viewing all the videos you’ve subscribe to, you can limit your Subscriptions feed to only show videos published today, unwatched videos, live videos etc. Do you primarily discover fun videos to watch through the Subscriptions tab in the YouTube app? If so, this feature is a great way to better sort through videos from your favorite YouTube creators.

According to Google, these handy filters aren’t mandatory at all.

YouTube topics subscriptions feed
The feature launches with six built-in filters.

“During our testing, we saw that these topics encouraged more subscribers to come to their subs feed daily to look for new updates,” the search giant noted in a support document. At the time of this writing, the available filters were limited to but a handful of topics. That said, Google is probably going to add additional options in the future via updates to the app.

The feature requires YouTube for iOS version version 15.02 or later.

If you’re like me, you subscribe to a lot of channels. If you’d like to bring some much-needed order to your Subscriptions feed, follow along with iDownloadBlog’s step-by-step tutorial that will teach you how to filter YouTube subscriptions in the iOS app with just a few taps.

How to filter YouTube subscriptions

Here’s how to switch from the default reverse chronological list for all videos in your Subscriptions feed to filtering out content that doesn’t fit your selected topic.

1) Launch the YouTube app on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

2) Tap the Subscriptions tab at the bottom.

3) Now tap one of the filters in a carousel below the top row of followed channels to have the app show a reverse chronological list of subscribed videos that match that filter.

filter YouTube subscriptions

The following topic-based filters are available:

  • All: Shows all subscribed vides in reverse chronological order, from latest to oldest.
  • Today: Shows only videos published within the past 24 hours.
  • Continue Watching: This filter only shows you videos that you previously started watching but haven’t finished yet.
  • Unwatched: This will only show subscribed videos that you haven’t yet watched.
  • Live: Show livestream videos and YouTube Premieres.
  • Posts: This shows you short Twitter-like community posts from subscribed channels.

The Today option is cool for those times when you’d like to catch up with the most recent videos from your favorite YouTube creators without having to watch all unwatched videos.

Watch the animation below to see this feature in action.

filter YouTube subscriptions
All filters are in reverse chronological order.

If you don’t use filters, the app will will continue to display content from the Subscriptions tab in reverse chronological order, which is basically the same as the “All” topic option.

Videos, posts or both?

As we mentioned earlier in this tutorial, Posts is the only filter that displays community posts that creators can optionally share with their followers. You can optionally choose which content types you’d like to see in your Subscriptions feed at any time though.

filter YouTube subscriptions topics community posts
You can turn on Community posts alongside videos in Subscriptions.

To change what’s shown in the Subscriptions feed, tap the rightmost Settings option in the carousel and choose how the content in the Subscriptions feed should be listed:

  • Videos and posts: Both videos and community posts are shown in the feed.
  • Videos only: Exclude community posts and only shows videos in the feed.

By default, the Subscription feed only displays videos.

Need help? Ask iDB!

If you like this tutorial, pass it along to your friends and leave a comment below.

Got stuck? Not sure how to do certain things on your Apple device? Let us know via help@idownloadblog.com and a future tutorial might provide a solution.

Submit your own how-to suggestions via tips@idownloadblog.com.