YouTube Gets Updated Design, New Features

Google has today shared a design update that will make YouTube more modern and bring new features to power the video-sharing platform.

“Starting today, we are rolling out a new look and several features that offer a more modern and immersive viewing experience while also improving how users watch videos,” notes Google.

The company is introducing a new ‘ambient mode’ which introduces a subtle effect so the app background color adapts to match the video. This feature will be available on web and mobile in dark theme.

Meanwhile, the dark theme has also been updated to be even darker so “the colors truly pop on your screen.”

Google is also making improvements to its video player. YouTube links in video descriptions will change to buttons, and frequent actions such as like, share and download, are now formatted to minimize distraction.

With pinch to zoom, you can now easily zoom in and out of a video while on your iOS or Android phone. And when you let go, the video stays zoomed in so you can enjoy the rest of the video in greater detail.

Have you ever followed along to a tutorial on your phone, but needed to keep rewinding so you could master that one small step?

Precise seeking helps solve this problem. Whether you’re on desktop or your mobile device, simply drag or swipe up while seeking to display a row of thumbnails in the video player and you’ll be able to make fine-tuned adjustments to get to the exact part in each video.

Over the next few weeks, these changes will gradually roll out to all users worldwide.