Best and Worst YouTube Tools and Features, According to Creators

Courtesy of Sam and Colby

Sam Golbach and Colby Brock are horror enthusiasts specializing in long-form, docu-style explorations of haunted locales. 

Favorite feature: 

Sam: "Showing what your audience watches other than your videos, videos that are recommending your videos, and what other channels' viewers watch."

Colby: "The Explore page Trending tag. It's a cool way to find other channels and creators you've never heard of before. Keeps you on top of everything going on in the YouTube world."

Least favorite feature: 

Sam: "Disabled likes. It helped a ton when you could click on a video and know if it was clickbait because of all the dislikes."

Colby: "Shorts pages. I understand that is where YouTube is heading, and they are trying to capitalize on short-form content. Totally makes sense, but since our videos are an hour long at minimum, it's something I haven't gotten into it yet. It's my least favorite because I know the least about it."

Wished-for feature:

Sam: "A way to 100% confirm a video's age restriction/monetization status before you post, because sometimes it's a guessing game and you are stuck wondering if it'll pass the test."

Colby: "A spot where all short-form content can be on one page and your long-form content can be on a different page. I don't like how Shorts are next to the longer form content. I hear there are betas for this as we speak. Once this is implemented, everyone across the board will have a more organized and neat-looking channel page."

Marina Mogilko. Marina Mogilko

Mogilko has several YouTube channels, and her most-subscribed-to channel is centered around tips for learning English.

Favorite feature: "Right now, definitely short videos —most of my growth is happening through them."

Least favorite feature: "Well I am glad it exists but I wish it worked faster: editing video after it's published. I noticed my credit card was visible in a part of a vlog after it was published, so we cut it out but it took hours for YouTube to process the video."

Wished-for feature: "Replying to comments with short videos! Great feature to interact with followers or explain things you were not able to communicate clearly, and to create new content at the same time."

Andrew Woomer

Conte is the patriarch of a family channel with his wife, Jess, and their daughter, Makaiah. He also operates a stand-alone music channel with 1.8 million subscribers.

Favorite feature: "My favorite feature on YouTube is the absolutely massive amount of backend data you're able to access on the performance and stats of your videos. It really gives you, as a creator, the opportunity to see exactly where things worked and where things didn't."

Least favorite feature: "As a creator, I would say the copyright claim system could definitely be improved. Obviously, those who own copyrights need to be able to claim what's rightfully their own work, but they shouldn't be able to claim 100% of the revenue on a 20-minute video that uses 15 seconds of their song."

Wished-for feature: "I actually have two ideas I would encourage YouTube to implement that have to do with my previous answer.

The copyright system should work in percentages. At the moment, if you have a 10-minute video and you use a song for 1 minute of that video, the copyright holder can still claim 100% of that video rather than only the 10% in which it was used. Splitting the revenue would be more fair to the creator and probably make more money for both the artist and creator. If content creators can still collect 90% of the revenue on 10-minute videos where they only use a song for 1 minute, it would encourage creators to use artist music way more often, giving the artists more opportunity for royalties, and make more appealing content for the creator to gain more viewership.

The second feature would be a split revenue feature for creators collaborating together. Say I had another content creator come feature in a video I'm putting together. As the system currently stands, I still make all the money on that video because it's posted to my own channel. I would love to see a feature where you can kick a chosen percentage of the revenue of a certain video to another creator who also has a YouTube channel capable of monetization. It would be similar to tagging someone as another creator on Instagram or TikTok, but you can also allocate a percentage of the revenue to compensate them for their work."

https://www.youtube.com/c/steveioe

Steven Ho is an ER technician-turned-standup comedian and creator who predominantly posts short-form content. 

Favorite feature: "My favorite YouTube feature is Super Chats and the company's approach to monetization on live streams. When people donate money during a livestream, their questions and comments stay pinned on the screen so I can easily see and answer them. It helps when there are a ton of comments flooding the chat. I also really like that you are able to schedule when you want your videos posted."

Least favorite feature: "My least favorite feature on YouTube is Stories, but I know it's a beta feature and they're working on feature improvements. Right now, I'm not able to add a link to my YouTube stories. I would like to be able to link my website with the dates to my comedy shows to my YouTube Stories, since people usually ask."

Wished-for feature: "A feature I wish YouTube had is being able to message other creators directly on YouTube. To contact other creators, you can email them or reply to them on the Community tab, but it isn't the same as being able to directly communicate and reach out."

Elliot Choy. Elliot Choy

Choy got his start on YouTube in 2019 from filming videos about studying and attending Vanderbilt University.

Favorite feature: "The feature where you can preview a video without clicking on it. I like that you can get a sense of what the video is going to be without having to click on it." 

Least favorite feature: "YouTube Stories. Mostly because I don't think people use it to make real-time updates about their lives."

Wished-for feature: "One feature that I would love to see YouTube implement is a feature where we can discover new videos different from the ones we typically watch. Similar to the feature on Netflix where they shuffle shows." 

Kirill in Paris for Flytographer

Sognonvi runs the NYC-based family travel YouTube channel Top Flight Family, which has 109,000 subscribers.

Favorite feature: "The 'hide user from channel' feature. When you click this, the user will see their own comment on the channel, but nobody else (including me, the creator) does. I wish more platforms would roll this out. Sometimes if you block someone, it escalates the situation. But with this feature on YouTube, you're essentially blocking someone but they don't realize they've been blocked."

Least favorite feature: "I can't say I have a least favorite feature, actually. I think YouTube is just way better built than any other social media platform. They've really invested in their creators, both in terms of cash and education. And I feel like their engineers actually know what they're doing, while Instagram often feels like it's hanging together with duct tape and gum."

Wished-for feature: "A better recommendation algorithm for YouTube Shorts. TikTok's FYP is still the gold standard when it comes to recommendations for short-form video. That's hard to debate. I'm sure YouTube will ramp up its efforts, but as of now, it feels like the audience who watches our Shorts is really low-quality compared to those who watch our long-form content."

Kelly Ann Smith

Smith is a personal-finance creator who films videos about investing and budgeting money.

Favorite feature: "My favorite YouTube feature is their audience retention graphs. I love to dig into the analytics of my video and see exactly where people are dropping off in the video and what I said or did at that time to lose them. I then use this data for future videos to know how to keep my audience watching longer. The longer a viewer stays on my video, the more YouTube will promote that video and push it out to more people."

Least favorite feature: "My least favorite feature in YouTube Studio is the built-in video editor, specifically the trim and cut and blur features. When I upload videos to YouTube, they are already edited by my editing software, but sometimes I need to go back and cut out a section of the video or blur private information. This feature is extremely cumbersome to use and not user-friendly at all. It is almost impossible to get the cuts or blur to be just how you want it to look."

Wished-for feature: "The feature I wish YouTube had was the ability to A/B test thumbnails right in the YouTube Studio. If we could upload two thumbnails and YouTube pushed them both out and kept the one with the best click-through rate, then we would see a huge difference in our viewership."