YouTube's 2025 Updates: Building Engagement, New Stats, Monetization and Second Chances

One of the things I do at the end of December is look back at all the changes that happened over the past year. And it turns out that in 2025 there were a ton of updates for Creators, not only on YouTube, but also Meta’s platforms (Threads, Facebook, Instagram), Twitch, TikTok, Reddit, and so much more.

What that means in practical terms is that there’s much too much to review all in a single article. So this week I’m going to give an overview of YouTube’s top updates in 2025 and next week I’ll recap 2025 Creator trends going into 2026.

You can find my personal 2025 recap here, with links to my top posts and video tutorials.

Thank you so much for reading, watching and joining me live!

YouTube’s Top 2025 Updates

YouTube is dominating entertainment. YouTube Creators are “The New Hollywood”, it’s the top video streaming platform, and where people get their podcasts. Part of the magic is that it’s for all types of Creators, both big and small.

In 2025 YouTube launched a number of new features that improved the platform both for viewers and Creators.

This year’s themes:

Building viewer engagement: expansion of Hype, Communities, Collaborations, Top Fan Leaderboards and more.
Video editing tools: AI-powered tools in the Shorts editor, expanded availability and new features in the YouTube Create app, automated Short Highlight videos from vertical live streams, and Clips from long-form podcast videos.
Live streaming updates: Dual streams, vertical streaming features, Top Fan Leaderboards, new monetization options.
Monetization updates: Less interruptive midroll ads, new Shopping features and options for Brand deals. For landscape live streams there are new side-by-side and “take a break” midroll ads.
Improvements to YouTube Analytics: including a new advanced analytics interface and new metrics.
YouTube Studio features: there’s Title A/B testing, Likeness detection (to spot deepfakes) and new comment settings and filters.
Improvements for viewers: an updated video player and improvements to YouTube on TVs.
AI in everything: generative AI creative tools, AI chatbots, AI summaries and so on. In August, I gave an overview of YouTube’s AI features, and there have been more since then. I’ll note that YouTube’s AI tools are not available in all countries.
Second Chances: YouTube has a pilot project that allows creators with terminated channels to possibly come back after a year and create a new channel.
Age limits and verification: Governments around the world are starting to require more limits on teen use, which requires platforms to verify user ages. YouTube, of course, is affected by this. They limited live streaming to users age 16 and older this year. And under-16s in Australia have been banned from the platform. To support this, YouTube and Google use AI to estimate user age, sometimes requiring additional verification.

Read on for more details!

What to look forward to in 2026: Recommendations beyond Algorithms and Authenticity

One of the current shifts across social platforms is adding features to help users to find content they are interested in beyond personalized algorithmic feeds.

In 2025 YouTube removed the “Trending” tab, noting that there are “many fandoms”, and a single trending list didn’t capture that reality.

And people are increasingly wary of being fed recommendations by “algorithms”.

So what do people like? Sharing videos with their friends. Instagram and TikTok both have created collaborative feeds based on direct messaging and what your friends are watching.

In November, YouTube started experimenting with video sharing in DMs. It’s early days, with few features, and only available in Ireland and Poland.

The other trend is letting people pick topics they are interested in, rather than showing a purely algorithmic feed. TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest all let people at least partially control what topics they see, and TikTok and Pinterest even let people limit the amount of AI-generated content in their feed.

Along those lines, YouTube is testing “Your Custom Feed” that lets you “update your existing Home feed recommendations with a simple prompt.”

I expect both of those features to expand in the coming year.

The other shift is a backlash against AI-generated content, something we’re already seeing. That may mean that authentic (or “authentic”) content gets a boost. It may mean more creators on camera or less polished-looking visuals. It will be interesting to see what the trends are a year from now.

Building Community and Increasing Viewer Engagement

The most exciting new features this year aren't entirely new. Some have been in test mode since 2024 or even earlier. But this year they were made available to (almost) everyone.

YouTube Communities: After a long test phase, YouTube Communities rolled out to almost all channels, changing the “Community” tab to the “Posts” tab. Communities were made available on desktop, and got new features like pinned posts, the ability to manage viewer posts in YouTube Studio (on the Community tab), Community post re-sharing and direct links.

New Posts Features: a “New Posts” button lets you see Posts within the Shorts feed and a dedicated Posts shelf on your channel Home tab. You can add up to 10 images (up from 5) to an Image Post and YouTube is experimenting with showing those Posts in the Shorts feed.

Collaborations: YouTube launched Collaborations on videos. There can be up to 5 channels collaborating, and the video is shown to fans of all of those channels. It’s also easy to subscribe to all the collaborators. There is a host channel, and watch time and revenue only goes to the host.

Automatic Dubbing: AI-powered automatic dubbing is now available to all channels with Advanced Settings enabled. There are currently 28 languages that can be dubbed to English, and 20 languages that English can be dubbed into. Dubbing is enabled by default, but you can turn it off in your channel settings in YouTube Studio. And finally, a few weeks ago, YouTube rolled out a setting that lets viewers set their preferred languages.

Improved Comments:

Expansion of voice replies to comments. This lets a creator post an audio reply to a comment on their own channel. The comment is transcribed for reading on desktop (and for people who don’t want to listen.)
You can limit comments to subscribers and members only, and set how long the commenter must have been a subscriber.
Comments are now threaded, making it easier to follow conversations.

Hype and Leaderboards: Hype expanded to 39 countries, including the US. This was originally launched in 2024 in Brazil, Taiwan and Turkey. There are Hype video Leaderboards that show the most hyped videos in a location broken down by category. Only new videos on channels with 500 to 500,000 subscribers can be hyped, with smaller channels getting a boost to even the playing field. When you Hype a video, you can also create a Post to share that and maybe get a hype train rolling.

YouTube Courses: YouTube Courses expanded to more creators, and the requirements got tighter: Courses must have the intent to teach, include at least three different videos, and not be age-restricted. Viewers can track their course progress and get a badge when they finish watching. Like podcasts, a Course is just a specialized playlist, so it’s easy to set up. Sadly, there is no way to monetize other than with ads. One-time-payments for courses were discontinued in November.

Playlist Voting: YouTube added the option to upvote and downvote videos in a playlist. That can let fans or friends decide which video they like best or change the order of a community music playlist.

Video Editing Tools

One of the big trends in 2025 is the proliferation of video editing apps and tools, especially with generative AI features. On mobile devices you can use the new Instagram-associated Edits app or the free Adobe Premiere mobile app (with built-in Shorts maker), if you want to move beyond TikTok’s CapCut. That’s not to mention all the AI-first video creation tools from Google, Meta, OpenAI and so forth.

It’s no surprise that YouTube has been investing in its video editing and creation tools as well.

YouTube Shorts Editor

The YouTube Shorts editor is available in the YouTube mobile app. While it has a number of AI-powered tools, you can use it with just your own video clips.

If you do want to use AI tools, you can start by opening the Shorts AI Playground, which helps you find Shorts AI tools all in one place. Just open the Shorts editor in the YouTube app, and tap the sparkle icon at top right to find those features.

Also new this year:

Create Shorts up to 3 minutes long. Starting in October 2024, any vertical or square video up to 3 minutes long became Shorts (the previous time limit was 1 minute). But the Shorts editor in the YouTube app was still limited to one minute until January 2025.
YouTube now automatically tags a location on restaurant and travel-related Shorts. You can turn this off in the video details in YouTube Studio on desktop.
There are editing guides to show you where you should not place text, stickers or important visuals.
Improved timeline and clip editing.
Use your gallery photos and effects in templates. The Shorts template creator automatically gets attribution.
The YouTube Shorts Editor uses Google’s latest video generation models, starting with Veo 2, then updating to Veo 3. You can generate very short clips, backgrounds, and animate still photos.
A new Remix feature that lets you “Extend with AI”, making the clip longer.
Create voiceovers with text-to-speech.
Automatically sync your clips to music.
Image stickers from your photo gallery.
AI-generated stickers from a text prompt.
Quiz stickers and “smart” Q&A Stickers
Shopping product stickers (for monetizing creators).
Dreamtrack music with vocals and speech-to-song.
Stylize editable captions.

If you want to create your own effects, YouTube has made their Effect Maker Tool available almost everywhere except Europe. This lets you create effects that can appear in the Shorts editor.

YouTube Create App

The YouTube Create video editor app finally got some updates. The app launched to very limited availability in 2023, and was mostly neglected in 2024.

In 2025 YouTube Create app availability expanded to 21 countries and was finally made available for iOS devices (after having been limited to Android).

It also gained new features, including templates, “Edit with AI” video creation from your gallery, and AI video generation.

Editing in YouTube Studio

If you have access to the Creator Music (beta) in YouTube Studio, you can use Dreamtrack to generate music tracks. The sound may not be the best, but the tracks don’t have licensing or copyright limitations.

On desktop there is a new AI-powered Clip creator that automatically suggests video clips from videos in a Podcast playlist.

A note that the YouTube video editor on desktop no longer lets you revert to the original video after editing. This setting was apparently being abused.

Live Streaming

Live streaming also has a number of new features for engagement and monetization.

YouTube is pushing vertical live streaming, as those videos can be discovered in the Shorts feed and tend to get more engagement than landscape live streams.

Top Fan Leaderboards were added to encourage engagement. Fans get points by chatting or by tipping with Super Chats, Super Stickers or Gifts (on vertical live streams). Fans can disable their participation and creators can turn it off on a stream.

The “Take a Break” option in the Live Control Room lets you show ads or a default video while you are taking a break of up to 5 minutes.

Side-by-side ads show while the stream is ongoing. The ad is on one side, while the muted stream continues. This is a replacement for regular mid-roll ads, which show in place of the stream.

For channels with Memberships enabled, it’s now possible to start a public live stream, and switch to Members Only. The idea is that this will encourage viewers to pay for Membership.

You can add a Managing Moderator, who can not only moderate the live chat, but also change settings like blocked words, message delay, participation mode, and the community defaults.

YouTube is rolling out Dual Streams, which let you stream in landscape and vertical formats simultaneously and one shared chat. This can currently only be controlled in Live Control Room, but more options and features should be available soon.

Specifically for vertical live streams:

Gifts are a way for fans to engage and tip vertical live streamers. Fans purchase Jewels with real money, and Jewels are used to purchase Gifts for monetizing creators. Creators can now enable Gift Goals to encourage people to add them, and there are new interactive Gift Effects.

And once a vertical live stream is over, AI automatically creates Highlights Shorts that you can optionally publish.

Policy Updates

Updated Policies: Violence, Gambling, Medical Misinformation

Updated harassment policy to prohibit ghoulish content of dead people narrating their own deaths, and content mocking the death or serious injury of an identifiable individual.

Began age-restricting scripted content with human actors that focuses on scenes of torture or violent death of a person showing blood. This is in alignment with TV and movie standards.

YouTube will also now age-restrict graphic gaming content that focuses on torture or “mass violence against non-combatants”.

Tightened up the gambling policy, which already only allowed promotion of gambling or casino sites certified by Google Ads or YouTube. The first step was to include URLs, links on images, text, any visuals like logos, and verbal references. Then it was expanded to include gambling with digital goods like NFTs or video game skins and social casino sites.

Updated the medical misinformation policy to prohibit content that falsely claims tobacco or nicotine are not addictive or harmful.

Second Chances

If your YouTube channel is terminated, you now have only one year to appeal a channel termination or content removal, and the number of appeals is limited.

And YouTube has been cracking down on violations of its circumvention policy. YouTube has long prohibited creators who had a channel terminated from creating or using new channels. Now this is being more strictly enforced (with many complaints).

But it may not be over. There’s what YouTube is calling a pilot program to give some creators with terminated channels a second chance. In some cases, if creators wait at least a year after their channel was terminated, they will have the option to create a new channel. The original content and subscribers are not restored.

Analytics and YouTube Studio Features

YouTube Studio is the home of settings and stats for creators.

Updated YouTube Analytics

Advanced Analytics got a complete makeover, with controls and filters on the sidebar, a menu of popular reports, and the option to save reports.

There are also new metrics:

The way Shorts views are counted changed. Instead of only counting a view when a Short is actively watched, it now counts a view when a Short starts playing. And they play automatically in the Shorts feed, making a “view” more like an impression, which is more in line with the way views are counted on TikTok and for Instagram Reels. The old Views are now counted as “Engaged Views”.

Device type stats show what percentage of watch time is from viewers on computers, mobile phones, tablets, and TVs. For many channels this highlights the shift to watching on the big screen.

Watch behavior stats break down your audience by new viewers, casual viewers and regular viewers (consistently watching for at least 6 months!). It also shows which content is popular with each type of viewer.

Content Tools

On the Content tab, you can now filter Playlists by description and visibility, not just the title. And you can see playlist views.

YouTube added Title testing to Thumbnail testing (which launched in 2024). Now you can test three title-thumbnail combinations. The winner is the combination that results in the most watch time.

Likeness Detection is rolling out to all creators in the YouTube Partner Program (by January), as a way to fight against deepfakes. To that end, the Copyright tab in YouTube Studio is now the Content Detection Tab. Once Likeness Detection is available for your channel, you’ll have the option to set it up with your ID and face and it will scan videos for unauthorized use of your likeness. When there’s a match, you can request that video be removed.

There are now clearer and more detailed copyright claims, including potential impact (for example what percentage of your audience might not be able to view the claimed video).

Manage Comments

The comment moderation settings were reorganized and renamed Community Moderation settings.

YouTube is expanding access to AI-powered comment suggestions, which are customized to (supposedly) use your tone and style. And if you comment in multiple languages, you may see suggestions in multiple languages.

And you can sort your comments by “most relevant” in addition to “newest” on the Community tab.

Get AI-Powered Help

“Ask Studio” is an AI-powered chatbot that is customized so you can ask it about your channel’s performance.

That’s in addition to a separate YouTube Help AI Chat that can provide information from the YouTube Help Center. Try “speak to an agent” to see if you have access to human support.

Monetization

YouTube and Google made a number of updates to monetization. If you make money, YouTube makes money, so everyone wins.

Less Interruptive Midroll Ads

YouTube changed the way midroll ads are placed, making them less “interruptive”. Many creators placed slots for midroll ads every minute, trying to maximize ads. Since many of those interrupt the flow of the video, it was a bad user experience. YouTube now encourages automatic ad placements, rather than manual placements, although that works for some content better than others.

The new side-by-side ads for live streams similarly don’t interrupt the stream as much as regular midroll ads do.

From the other side of the business, Google started offering “Peak Points” ad slots to advertisers. This uses Gemini AI to determine peak moments in popular videos, and place ads there. Hopefully not in an interruptive ad slot.

Brand Deals

YouTube is making it easier for creators to connect with brands.

Google Ads now has a Creator Partnership hub, which lets advertisers connect with creators using BrandConnect. Brands can post an “Open Call” that lets creators submit their content (currently only available for Shorts).

And creators can enable Channel Insights sharing that lets Brands see your channel viewer demographics and other stats.

Monetization Policy Updates

YouTube updated their YouTube Partner Program guidelines to better identify “mass produced” and “repetitious” content. The repetitious content policy was renamed “inauthentic” content policy to better reflect this.

YouTube updated their monetization policy and now fully monetizes videos with strong profanity in the first 7 seconds. Previously that would get limited ads. The original policy was modeled on policy for TV shows, but advertisers now have the controls to choose where their ads appear.

YouTube started making additional reviews of uploads for ad suitability. This could take up to 24 hours, but is more accurate than the original quick review. That made it less likely for a video to be initially approved for monetization, only to have monetization turned off.

YouTube also cracked down on Shopping tagging violations, requiring tagged products to be meaningfully related to your content, be used as designed, and shown nicely.

Note that if you block ads on your videos by category, the AdSense ad-blocking controls have been cleaned up a bit. “Video Games (Casual & Online)” was removed, but was still covered by the "Video Games, Consoles & Accessories" and "Online Games & Puzzles" categories. They also deprecated the Bare Skin/Significant Skin Exposure categories, which are still partially covered by the “References to Sex”, “Swimwear” and “Underwear” categories.

New Payment Methods

AdSense now supports payments using PayPal Hyperwallet. Once this is set up, your payment is transferred to your “Hyperwallet”, where it then can be collected by transferring to paypal, Venmo, actual cash, and even cryptocurrency. This initially rolled out in the US, and has expanded to China and Argentina. I expect it will become more broadly available in 2026.

Viewer Updates

All those Creator updates are only meaningful if people are watching. Updates for viewers in 2025 included:

Hide end screens: End screens on videos can end up obscuring the video. Now you can click on the eye icon to hide those suggested videos and subscribe buttons.

Blurred thumbnails in the search results: If you do a search with results that may include sexual themes, the thumbnails are blurred so there aren’t unexpected surprises. You can unblur them.

Trending Charts: YouTube killed the Trending tab, but added Top Podcast charts. There are also charts for trending music videos and movie trailers.

New visual interface: YouTube rolled out a new visual interface with a cleaner and more immersive video player, custom “Like” animation on some videos, smoother saving to playlists, and improved “double tap to seek”.

Find Public Content: On a channel’s Videos tab, you can now filter for Public or Members-Only content. YouTube began showing Members-Only content on that tab to everyone, which can be frustrating if you are not a paid Member to the channel and you are looking for videos to watch.

Improved TV viewing: On TVs, YouTube added screen immersive previews, a “From your top channels” shelf, a dedicated Shorts shelf. Creators can upload larger thumbnails, for better visuals.

Visual Enhancements: YouTube also wants to make lower resolution videos look better with AI upscaling. You can turn this off in your channel settings.

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