YouTube appears to have removed search filters from iOS app

YouTube users on iOS devices are reporting a puzzling disappearance of search filters from the mobile app. As expected, complaints are piling up online.

Multiple users have taken to platforms like Reddit and X to voice their concerns about the missing functionality. The issue centers around the three-dot menu button that typically appears next to the search bar, which provides access to advanced filtering options.

Here are before and after screenshots shared by a user on Reddit:

This feature allows users to sort results by upload date, view count, video duration, and other parameters that make finding specific content much easier.

According to discussions on r/youtube, users have been struggling with this problem for several days. One frustrated Redditor posted that the advanced features button has simply vanished, and while deleting and reinstalling the app temporarily fixes the issue, the problem returns as soon as they open a different app and come back to YouTube.

After seeing these reports, I checked on my iPhone and noticed the three-dots menu for search filters is indeed missing. The only filtering options available are the row of chips at the top of search results, which let users filter by “All,” “Shorts,” “Videos,” “Unwatched,” “Watched,” “Recently uploaded,” “Live,” and similar basic categories. The more granular filtering options that many users rely on are nowhere to be found.

However, upon checking on Android, the search filter option is still present and functioning normally. This suggests the issue might be limited to iOS devices specifically.

Several users tagged YouTube’s support team on X, but they haven’t offered any useful information. YouTube has not yet issued an official statement clarifying the situation either. So we’ll have to hope that it’s just a bug and not an intentional change.

We’ll keep an eye out for any further developments and will post an update if there’s something to share.