YouTube has indeed begun testing a major interface redesign that removes the Subscriptions tab from its traditional, muscle-memory-friendly spot on the bottom navigation bar.

Before you completely panic or cancel your Premium membership, the feed itself isn’t dead—it’s just being moved to a place that is significantly more annoying to reach.

1. Where Is the Subscriptions Feed Moving?

In the new experimental layout, YouTube is shifting the Subscriptions feed to a secondary, swipeable top menu located just below the app’s logo.

• The New Home: It now sits at the top of the screen as a pill-shaped filter tab, alongside existing categories like “Music,” “Gaming,” and “New to You.”
• The Double Home Paradox: Curiously, this new top layout includes a secondary “Home” filter right next to the newly placed “Subscriptions” filter, despite the main “Home” tab still anchoring the bottom navigation bar.

2. What Is Replacing It on the Bottom Bar?

The vacancy on the bottom menu is being used to give the “Create” (Plus) icon its own permanent, heavily emphasized space. This is a noticeable shift in platform priorities, likely making room for a new suite of AI-driven video creation and Shorts tools that Google is rolling out.

3. Why Are Users Frustrated?

The backlash across tech communities and platforms like Reddit has been immediate, centering on two major flaws:

• The Ergonomic Nightmare: Moving a heavily frequented tab from the bottom to the very top makes one-handed browsing incredibly difficult on modern, ultra-tall smartphones.
• Algorithmic Pushing: Many users deliberately use the Subscriptions tab as their default app landing page to completely bypass YouTube’s Home algorithm and algorithmic recommendation feeds. Relocating it forces users to land on the algorithmic Home page first.

4. Is This Change Permanent?

The good news is that this is currently an experimental server-side A/B test rolling out to a limited group of Premium and non-Premium accounts.

Historically, YouTube tests radical UI shifts all the time. If the test group yields low engagement or high user frustration metrics, the design may be completely scrapped before a global rollout. In fact, some early testers reported that the new top UI briefly broke entirely—rendering their subscriptions temporarily inaccessible—before the app automatically reverted back to the classic bottom-tab layout.