Google is rolling out a refreshed design for its popular video-sharing platform YouTube. The facelift comes alongside the range of features that were previously said to be under beta testing. The announcement comes months after YouTube celebrated its 17th birthday in February.
“… 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,” YouTube notes on its blog post.
“After tinkering with several ideas, ambient mode came to life. And when the first design concept was met with overwhelmingly positive reactions from users during testing, we knew we were onto something,” adds YouTube.
According to the company, the dark theme has been updated to darker so that colours look more vivid on screen. This will come to YouTube across mobile, smart TV and web platforms. The video playlists will also get the same darker shades and will show more details about each playlist.
The YouTube links in video descriptions will be changed to buttons and the subscribe button has also been redesigned with a new shape and high contrast making it easier to spot on both watch pages and channel pages.
The pinch to zoom and precise seeking features which were previously reported to be in beta testing have also started rolling out to all users. The pinch to zoom feature lets you zoom in and out of a video while on your iOS or Android phone while precise seeking lets you go to an exact point of time in the video.
YouTube states that precise seeking has been built on its recent improvements to video navigation that helps quickly find the parts viewer is most interested in. The company launched the ability to long press anywhere on the player to seek and to double tap with two fingers to skip chapters.