YouTube is adding ‘seasons’ to make your favorite channel more like Netflix

YouTube creators can now break their videos up into different seasons and episodes to make them easier for viewers to navigate — and binge-watch — on TV. The upcoming feature comes as YouTube has increasingly been pushing into the living room, with YouTuber revenue on TVs up 30 percent year over year, according to the company.

Content creators can soon tailor their uploads for viewers in a format that looks very similar to Netflix and other streaming services when viewed on the TV, with full-screen episode descriptions and a hierarchy of seasons and episodes to navigate.

YouTube has not described how the new formatting will translate to desktop and mobile UI, but expect to see it in some form on all platforms. Creators are getting other TV-focused tools, too, including the ability to add “immersive content” that plays on their channel page.

Some YouTubers have tediously created seasons and episodes for their shows by utilizing playlists and numbered naming conventions under each upload. But they do not always translate in a friendly way on YouTube’s apps on TV platforms like Apple TV, Roku, and others.