The giant video-sharing site was launched back in February 2005, and more than a year later, it was bought by Google. Now, YouTube is already 17 years old, and the company is giving the world’s second-most visited site a makeover.
For those who use dark mode, the YouTube player on desktop and mobile now has an Ambient Mode function that allows the colours of the video to ooze out of the player and create a gentle glow effect.
If you feel like the dark mode isn’t dark enough for you, YouTube has made it even darker. This change applies to mobile, desktop, and TV.
A splash of ambient colour and more information about the playlist itself is included in the revamped Playlist interface.
You could previously trim the video to suit your screen by using the pinch gesture, but with the ‘Pinch-to-zoom’ feature, now you can keep zooming in to get a closer look at something.
With ‘Precise-seeking’, 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. Also, you can double tap with two fingers to skip chapters.
Finally, YouTube links in video descriptions will change to buttons, and frequent actions such as like, share and download, are now formatted to minimize distractions.
YouTube said these changes will be gradually rolling out to all users over the next few weeks.
