Matti Robinson
3 May 2017 12:31
YouTube turned 12 this year and to celebrate the last pre-teen year the video platform is updating its look. The new user interface has adopted a design philosophy from the parent company Google.
The new UI takes the Material Design from Google's Android operating system which makes the website look more simplistic but does not affect the functionality in any meaningful sense. The layout hasn't been changed which isn't a susprise, after all people are very familiar with how the platform works, but YouTube hopes the new UI gives a more spacey and less busy feel to the site.
In addition to the new UI there are some new features though. For example, now users can choose to use a Dark Mode theme instead of the normal lighter theme. The Dark Mode is obviously good if you use the website in a dark room.
YouTube has also introduced a slight technical change in the use of JavaScript. They now use Google's own Polymer JavaScript libraries which should prove to be more efficient and faster.
You can try out the new UI here even though it has not been finished and officially launched yet.