It’s been a strange few weeks for YouTube. After trying out a few controversial features, including changes like blocking 4K playback for free users and increasing the number of ads shown, Google has increased the price of its Premium plans for family subscribers in most parts of the world. Fortunately, today brings good news to the platform as YouTube has rolled out a major UI redesign that should make watching videos on mobile devices, smart TVs, and the web a whole lot more fun.
Visually, YouTube’s changes focus on some new icons and lighting options. The company introduces the new dynamic color sampling “environment mode” calls it and Material YouIt’s a similar idea, though not a 1:1 re-creation of what we’ve seen from . Ambient mode lighting works like the LED backlights you can buy for TVs, reflecting whatever’s on the screen and illuminating your status bar for a more immersive effect. Available on the web and mobile in dark mode – which is darker than ever before. If you’re a fan of deep OLED blacks versus boring grays, this variation is for you.
YouTube is also redesigning the buttons that appear below the videos. The likes, dislikes, share, download and subscribe features all have a new look and links in the description now appear as buttons, making them easy to find and click. If you want to emulate the hardware setup of your favorite vlogger, tapping these Amazon links should offer a much better experience.
The mobile app is also getting a few new tools that were previously limited to a Premium-exclusive menu of experimental features. Pinch and zoom has been a mainstay in apps like Twitch, and today it’s finally live for all users, allowing you to enlarge any part of a video while watching it. Precise scrolling is also introduced, which offers a better way to find specific moments in a video. Combined with the most repetitive graphics YouTube rolled out earlier this year, finding the right moment in an upload has never been easier. Precision scrolling isn’t just limited to mobile users, as it’s also available on the web.
As with a Google product, none of these changes are brand new – the company likes to test new tools and UI settings long before a public launch. Whatever new original is blowing up Netflix, it should provide an overall smoother and more immersive experience if you usually choose to watch new downloads from your favorite creators.