By Gavin Boyle
YouTube announced it will soon remove its “trending” tab, explaining that there are better ways for the platform to push popular content to its users.
“Back when we first launched the Trending page in 2015, the answer to ‘what’s trending?’ was a lot simpler to capture with a singular list of viral videos that everyone was talking about,” YouTube said in a blog post explaining the change. “[Today] trends consist of many videos created by many fandoms, and there are more micro-trends enjoyed by diverse communities than ever before. Viewers increasingly learn about trends in different places across YouTube – from recommendations, and search suggestions to Shorts, comments and Communities.”
To help users find what is popular within their given interests, YouTube revealed it will be pushing more top charts for things like music and podcasts, while continuing to tweak its algorithm so users will receive popular videos about the topics they are most interested in.
The change comes as YouTube undergoes a variety of major updates that have been taking place over the past couple of years. For example, the website has ranked as the largest streaming platform for over two years in a row, and in some months, the company is responsible for the most amount of TV usage across the entertainment industry. Users now average over 1 billion hours of YouTube watched on TVs every day.
Meanwhile, the company has also taken over the short-form video space, with these videos receiving over 200 billion daily views, according to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan. Furthermore, 70% of all YouTube channels now upload Shorts to help drive growth. To further incentivize creators to produce short-form content, YouTube recently increased its ad-revenue split on the content to match that of long-form content.
Related: Could YouTube Shorts Dethrone TikTok?
“It’s something that we have been working on for a while and it’s a testament to both the viewer side, but also the quality of the ad products that we build for our advertisers,” Mohan told an investor conference, per The Wrap.
To ensure YouTube remains the home of high-quality content, YouTube also recently made a massive announcement, that it would no longer monetize videos created solely by AI.
“In order to monetize as part of the YouTube Partner Program, YouTube has always required creators to upload ‘original’ and ‘authentic’ content. On July 15, 2025, Youtube is updating our guidelines to better identify mass-produced and repetitious content. This update better reflects what ‘inauthentic’ content looks like today,” the company wrote in a blog post.
YouTube did not become the largest entertainment platform in the world by accident. A series of trials and innovations has made it what it is today. Adding and removing features is part of this process, which is why the ditching the Trending tab is not particularly surprising.
Read Next: What YouTube’s New AI Policy Means for Your Feed
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