Yesterday, Google announced a new look and several features for YouTube to offer a modern and immersive viewing experience. Here’s the summary of the key changes that are coming to YouTube:
- Using dynamic color sampling, ambient mode 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.
- Dark theme has been updated to be even darker so the colors truly pop on your screen. This will roll out on web, mobile and Smart TVs.
- Video playlists will adopt the same color treatment and now show more details about each playlist so viewers can easily jump right in.
- YouTube links in video descriptions will change to buttons, and frequent actions such as like, share and download, are now formatted to minimize distractions.
- The subscribe button is also getting a touch up: the new shape and high contrast make it really stand out, and while it’s no longer red
- With pinch to zoom, you can now easily zoom in and out of a video while on your iOS or Android phone.
- Precise seeking: 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.
- The ability to long press anywhere on the player to seek and to double tap with two fingers to skip chapters. There is a graph that shows frequently replayed moments in a video.
Over the next few weeks, Google will roll out these changes to all users.