A lot of updates on the popular streaming platform has been announced today by YouTube.
First of all, the service now has a new logo, with the wordmark combining with an icon. The icon we are talking about is the regular Play button, which is now sitting on top of the red outline of a CRT TV that used to be under the “Tube” part of the wordmark.
The icon is to the left of the wordmark on the website, but in some cases the brightened up icon will be used as an abbreviated logo. This change will be rolling out today.
The service’s mobile apps have been given a new design that has the navigation tabs on the bottom (which includes new Library and Account sections), the ability to speed up and slow down playback (previously a web-only feature), and recently a row of suggested videos has been added to the full screen view.
Furthermore, “in the coming months” you’ll be able to jump between videos with a swipe – left for previous, right for next.
Soon, the YouTube player will seamlessly change shape to match the video format you’re watching, so no more black bars on those vertically-shot videos.
Lastly, the area below the player should let you “browse videos in totally new ways” at some point in the future.
The desktop interface of YouTube is now fully Material Design infused for everyone. What’s more, it features a dark theme.
These features have been available for some users as YouTube has conducted extensive testing, but they’re now rolling out across the globe.
