YouTube is no stranger to radical changes. Some end up leaving users perplexed, some are well-received, while others are an instant hit.
The streaming giant is currently testing out a UI change for its web media player. You decide whether this new look will be a hit or a miss.
For reference, back in April this year, Google announced that it was working on a UI redesign for the YouTube on TV app. At the time, Google said that the redesign would land later in the summer. Although it didn’t allude that the same UI would make its way to YouTube on the web, users at the time began to see similar changes when accessing YouTube via their desktop browser.
The change was very limited at the time, though it now seems to be making its way out widely.
Where’s the volume slider?
Several users have reported gaining access to the new UI in the past 24 hours (via 9to5Google), and most seem unhappy about the change. Users are not wrong to complain. The streaming platform’s red and white media player UI has remained consistent for almost a decade, and the new change is a radical departure from what users are familiar with.
We’ve compared the new design to the Apple TV UI in the past, but user Macaroon_12345 pointed out a more apt comparison to Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language. That, paired with Google’s new Material 3 design language, is what the new UI looks like. It puts commonly used controls like the Play/Pause buttons, timeline, chapters, and others within pills.
In addition to the new UI elements, the redesign also relocates the volume slider, which now sits on the opposite side of the screen. Elsewhere, when users encountered the new UI back in April, they reported that the volume slider had changed from its regular horizontal adjustment layout to a vertical one, and that the ability to hover and scroll or use keyboard keys for volume adjustment might have been removed. The new UI hasn’t been rolled out to us just yet, so we aren’t able to confirm these specific changes.
Has the redesigned UI rolled out to you? Do you prefer it over the familiar red and white layout? Let us know in the comments below.
