How to create a fully customizable multiview

Multiview is one of my favorite YouTube TV features. Being able to watch two, three, or four channels at once is such a huge perk (especially during football season). And as of recently, multiview just got a huge upgrade.

Previously, you could only use multiview with channel combinations that YouTube TV picked for you. You could lightly customize these multiview setups, but there was no option to build your own multiview from scratch with exactly the channels you wanted. However, that’s finally changed.

Reports of YouTube TV’s new custom multiview first appeared online on April 22. And from what we can tell, the custom multiview isn’t tied to a specific app update/version. In typical Google fashion, it appears to be gradually rolling out as a server-side update.

Additionally, if you don’t see the custom multiview on one of your devices, it may be available on something else. For example, I can build a completely customized multiview on the YouTube TV app on my smart TV, but not on the Android app.

In other words, if you’re still seeing the old multiview options, be patient. It’s impossible to say how quickly you’ll get access to the new setup, but you will. These things just take time.

With that out of the way, it’s time to show you how to build a fully custom multiview (and how to check if you can actually use the feature). Here’s what you’ll need to do:

1. While watching a channel on YouTube TV, bring up the playback controls.
2. Go to Multiview.
3. Select Watch in multiview.
4. Select Your multiview (above the pre-made options).
5. Choose up to four channels to include. These are organized by Recommended, Sports, News, Movies, Shows, and Other.
6. After picking your channels, navigate back to the top and select Watch new multiview.

You’ll need to wait a few seconds for your new multiview to be created, but soon enough, you’ll be watching exactly the channels you selected — not ones YouTube TV chose for you. This is how multiview should have been since the beginning, and it’s great to finally see it in action.

After creating your custom multiview, you can edit it by showing the playback controls, selecting Change multiview, and then Your multiview. This brings you back to the multiview creation UI from earlier, allowing you to add and remove channels as you please.

And that’s all there is to it! As mentioned above, Google is slowly rolling this feature out, so don’t worry if you don’t see it on your devices quite yet. Keep checking regularly; it’ll eventually turn up.