Editor’s note from Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan: On its home page, YouTube included a search box and a list of video tags when the first video was posted there in 2005. You may argue that we’ve undergone some adjustments since then. We’re providing a design change that will make YouTube more contemporary and provide new capabilities to power the YouTube you already know and love in this most recent episode of our Innovation series.
We questioned whether it was time to give YouTube a minor facelift given it had just turned 17 this year. As a result, we solicited feedback from tens of thousands of visitors worldwide and learned that they preferred a simpler, livelier design that more accurately reflected our mission.
We are launching a new design and a number of features that will enhance how people watch videos while also providing a more contemporary and immersive watching experience. But don’t worry, we’re still fundamentally the same YouTube that you know and love.
The use of colour youtube
Our main focus during the development process was colour. We wanted to make our applications more lively without interfering with users’ routines, such as watching their suggested films or searching for fresh material.
After experimenting with various concepts, the ambient mode was born. And we knew we were onto something when user testing of the first design idea revealed highly favourable responses from them.
The ambient mode uses dynamic colour sampling to add a subtle effect so that the app backdrop colour changes to match the video. In order to lure visitors into the material and make the video even more prominent on our watch page, we were inspired by the light that screens emit in a space that is otherwise dark. Both the online and mobile versions of this feature will support a dark theme.
While we’re at it, we’re happy to announce that the dark theme has been changed to be even darker so the colours really shine on your screen in response to your input. It will launch on the web, mobile devices, and smart TVs.
We didn’t overlook those that take great care in creating the ideal playlist! The same colour scheme will be used for video playlists, and they now display additional information about each playlist so that viewers can simply get started.
All of it begins with a video
We are aware that watching your favourite video is the major reason you visit YouTube. We are thus implementing changes to refocus on the video player.
The YouTube links in video descriptions will now be buttons, and frequent actions like “like,” “share,” and “download” have been styled to reduce visual clutter on the watch page. The subscribe button is also receiving a makeover: while it’s no longer red, it’s simpler to spot and far more accessible to everyone on both watch sites and channel pages thanks to its new form and high contrast.
We are also more than simply our appearance. Many of you questioned when we would make certain new product features more widely accessible after we introduced and tested a number of new product features on youtube.com/new earlier this year. The wait is over as we now make pinch-to-zoom and accurate seeking available to everyone.
You may now effortlessly zoom in and out of a video while using your iOS or Android phone thanks to pinch to zoom. The film continues to be zoomed in after you release go, allowing you to view the rest of it in more detail. Rest your fingers for a moment!
Have you ever watched a lesson on your phone and had to keep going back to learn that one little step? This issue may be resolved with precise seeking. You may make precise modifications to get to the precise point in each movie whether you’re on a desktop or mobile device by simply dragging or swiping up while attempting to get the video player to show a row of thumbnails.
Precise seeking expands on our most recent upgrades to the video navigation, which make it easier for you to identify the segments that interest you the most quickly. We introduced the ability to seek by long pressing anywhere on the player and skip chapters by double tapping with two fingers. A graph that displays commonly repeated video segments was also included.
The YouTube team has always prioritised user feedback when considering how to make improvements for our users, and today’s upgrades were no different. These modifications will progressively be made available to all users over the coming weeks, so test out the new look and tell us what you think!
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