Casually browsing YouTube on a mobile device is a pretty good experience, or at least it's about as good as anything we've seen on a phone or tablet so far. However, many of us aren't going to YouTube just to poke around at the latest trending videos and subscriptions, we're actually looking for something specific, and that's when the search UI comes in. Mobile search is pretty comparable to the web experience too–in fact, they are almost in feature parity–but there are still a few things missing from mobile. But a teardown reveals one of those missing features will be there soon: sorting options in search results.

Teardown

Disclaimer: Teardowns are based on evidence found inside of apks (Android's application package) and are necessarily speculative and usually based on incomplete information. It's possible that the guesses made here are totally and completely wrong. Even when predictions are correct, there is always a chance that plans could change or may be canceled entirely. Much like rumors, nothing is certain until it's officially announced and released.

The features discussed below are probably not live yet, or may only be live for a small percentage of users. Unless stated otherwise, don't expect to see these features if you install the apk.

Sorting Search Results

YouTube supports a pretty extensive set of filters, allowing users to cut down results by date, type, duration, and even those with special features and very high quality levels. The mobile app provides all of the filters from the web interface, though purchases appear elsewhere, but it's still missing sort options. These aren't filters, per se, but they're located in the same box and work hand-in-hand with the filters to put the right videos into view. According to some new strings in v11.20, the sorting options will be making the jump to mobile YouTube very soon.

<string name="by_date_search">Upload Date</string>
<string name="by_rating_search">Rating</string>
<string name="by_relevance_search">Relevance</string>
<string name="by_view_count_search">View count</string>

The strings don't appear to be in use anywhere in the app, so we'll probably have to wait for a new version to roll out before we can sort freely. Of course, YouTube has been pushing quite a few things through A/B tests, so the sort options may appear in the filters screen without notice.

Download

The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.

Version: 11.20.54