Although I’ve tried other streaming and cable services, I keep returning to YouTube TV as my streaming platform of choice.
I love YouTube TV for many reasons, including unlimited DVR and the best content-surfacing algorithm.
Still, not all features are created equal. You’ll want to tweak certain features and settings to elevate your experience and get the most out of it on your favorite streaming devices.
From one of the earliest subscribers to YouTube TV, here are my tips to get the most out of Google’s TV streaming service.
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Making the subscription fee more bearable
Add every single show to your library
Use that unlimited DVR to its full potential
There’s a secret to the incredible YouTube TV content-matching algorithm. You need to feed it with as much information about your likes and dislikes as possible.
After several years, YouTube TV finally understands everything I like, and the platform has surfaced shows I didn’t know existed.
The first step is to find the shows you currently watch. Go to the show on YouTube TV and add it to your library. This does two things. It ensures new episodes are recorded and starts recording all the repeats.
The unlimited DVR means you can record tens of thousands of hours of content.
After seven years, I’ve added over 500 shows to my library, and around 50,000 hours of content I can watch.
You can add as many shows and movies as you want to your Library, and the service will keep recordings for up to nine months.
Live TV repeats a lot of older episodes, and my YouTube TV library includes all 22 seasons of NCIS. That’s 467 episodes of NCIS, plus at least another 50 of the spin-off shows.
The same applies to Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU (over 1,000 total), Modern Family (250), The Simpsons (650+), Hell’s Kitchen (340+), MasterChef (270+), and more.
Occasionally, YouTube TV autoplays an older episode of a show, or if you’re using a streaming device with a remote, you accidentally play the wrong episode.
When this happens, it appears on your home page, and removing it is simple.
On a mobile, select Mark as Watched from the overflow menu (the three ellipses).
If you use, say, an Apple TV (my favorite streaming device), hover over the show, then press and hold the select button.
Enable alerts for shows you want to watch live
Don’t miss the shows that truly matter to you
Credit: Lynn Van den Broeck / Play Store
When you have hundreds of shows and tens of thousands of hours to watch, it becomes difficult for YouTube TV to flag the shows you want to watch when they happen live.
This is where notifications come in and why you should install the YouTube TV app on all your devices.
On your mobile device, navigate to a show on YouTube TV and press the Notify button (often a bell icon). This alerts you when new episodes of the show are broadcast live and ensures you don’t run into spoilers on the internet.
As my YouTube TV library grows, especially with the algorithm surfacing new content, it’s harder to keep up with the shows I enjoy watching.
Notifications ensure I keep up with everything I want to watch live.
YouTube TV is fantastic for sports and live events
There’s no better streaming platform for sports
If there’s one reason to subscribe to YouTube TV, it’s the coverage of sports and live events. It’s the best platform for these.
Multiview landed on YouTube TV in 2023 as a sports-first feature, built for weekends stacked with overlapping games. For a long time, that’s where it stayed.
Over the past year, Google has loosened the reins, gradually extending Multiview beyond sports and experimenting with select non-sports channels.
Similarly, I love the Key Plays feature. It’s turned on by default and lets you catch up with the key highlights of a game when you join mid-way through.
I use this to watch the key goals and misses from my beloved Man United matches.
The unlimited DVR also comes in handy. You don’t need to decide what to watch or record, and you can record every sport.
I’m not a huge American sports fan, but I set up YouTube TV to record every Giants, Warriors, Sharks, and Lakers game. It also records every session of every F1 race and every Premier League game for every team.
Why? Because I can.
Customize the TV Guide and all the add-ons
Make it yours
Credit: YouTube
The last thing I recommend is customizing the TV Guide and add-ons to suit your needs.
YouTube TV comes with options to make it a truly customized experience.
Want limited 4K coverage, offline downloads, and multiple concurrent streams? Those are available via add-ons.
When you customize the TV Guide order (or which channels show) and new channels are added to YouTube TV later, they don’t appear on the TV Guide until you manually add them to your customization.
Like most cable providers, it includes add-ons for other streaming services, including Max, Starz, Paramount+, Sundance Now, and more, giving you access to various streaming services from one platform.
If you want the NFL, YouTube TV is the home of the Sunday Ticket and NFL RedZone.
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YouTube TV keeps on giving
After trying just about every cable alternative worth mentioning, I’ve realized that YouTube TV doesn’t just replace cable. It improves on it in meaningful ways.
With unlimited DVR, I never have to think about storage.
YouTube TV prioritizes sports with features like Multiview, key plays, and alerts tailored to modern viewing habits for live events.
Adding every show to my library turns the service into an always-on safety net. If something airs, I know it’ll be waiting for me later.
For cord-cutters who care about live TV, sports, and not babysitting their subscriptions, YouTube TV keeps proving the same point: After you dial it in, there’s very little reason to leave.
