It is YouTube’s 17th anniversary, and the video streaming platform is rolling out new features. All these features have been developed or improved by reading the user suggestions. Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer shared that the company is trying to improve the design and appeal to the users.
The primary design change is that the YouTube app will offer ambient mode. This design tweak will make the app background change according to the color scheme of the video currently playing in the app. YouTube believes that it will help maintain color uniformity across the app and not disorient users’ attention. The ambient mode uses dynamic color sampling to create a subtle color effect and not draw too much attention. It will only be on the web and mobile versions in the dark theme.
YouTube Redesign: More small changes
Another major YouTube redesign is a heavy focus on decluttering the app interface. All the embedded links will appear in the form of buttons in the app. The like, share, and download buttons are now shrunk to free up some screen space. The YouTube subscribe button will sport a new shape and high contrast, but it won’t be red like before. Furthermore, dark mode lovers can rejoice because YouTube will make dark mode even darker, so that it is easy to focus and not fry your eyeballs in the dark.
Another great YouTube redesign feature is the pinch to zoom. The term is self-explanatory. You can pinch on any part of the video to zoom in and follow the instructions precisely. While we loved the non-moving playback design, zooming in a video is surprisingly a heavily requested feature by the users. The video will continue to play and display the zoomed area unless you revert to the normal size.
YouTube will also offer the precise seeking feature. It will showcase thumbnails for the entire video so that you can skip to the relevant part precisely. Earlier, you had to guess the timings and tap on the timeline to skip to a part. These are some notable upgrades arriving on YouTube, with many more in development.
The platform received flak over its decision to make 4K videos into a premium-exclusive feature. YouTube is also expanding Shorts, its short-video format. Combine all of these developments, and we can expect YouTube to serve an even higher variety of content in the future.
