YouTube to discontinue YouTube Stories on June 26

Starting June 26, YouTube will officially sunset its YouTube Stories feature. After this date, users will no longer be able to create new YouTube Stories. Any existing stories created before the deadline will expire after the usual 7-day period, with no viewable YouTube Stories available from Monday, July 3.

According to YouTube, the decision to discontinue YouTube Stories is driven by a focus on other popular features such as YouTube Shorts and Community posts. The platform recently made Community posts available to all channels, removing the previous requirement of 1,000 subscribers to activate the feature.

In an announcement on its community forum, YouTube explained, "Today, there are many ways to create on YouTube – from Community posts to Shorts, to long-form and Live. To prioritize these key features, Stories are going away."While YouTube Stories aimed to compete with Instagram's Stories feature, it didn't gain the same level of popularity. YouTube data reveals that creators experienced significantly more subscriber growth through YouTube Shorts compared to YouTube Stories. Additionally, Community posts fostered better interaction with subscribers.

Although YouTube Stories will no longer be available, the platform recognizes the value of an ephemeral nature and has introduced an expiration option for Community posts, allowing them to disappear after 24 hours.

Discontinuing lesser-used features like YouTube Stories helps avoid overwhelming the platform with confusing options, ultimately ensuring a better user experience and driving more traffic to videos and channels.