Google has updated the look of the YouTube player interface with a transparent design of the bottom bar plus a few tweaks to the user interface in the toggles area, which frankly is a welcome update. The transparent design goes well with the video watching experience because it creates an “infinity” experience due to its transparent nature. Previously, there was a black bar at the bottom which limited the video to that point.
Another change to the player are the controls where choosing the speed, closed caption and quality settings where if clicked display a flip animation to the side unlike before where there was a up & down animation. When you hover away from the video, the controls disappear and appear when you hover the cursor over the player. However, the controls remain static when the video has been paused.
YouTube’s official Twitter account announced the changes to the player design via this tweet where they likened the sleeker interface is “slicker than a squirrel on skis”.
Ooh la la! Our new player design is slicker than a squirrel on waterskis! pic.twitter.com/9tS1pm3NiG
— YouTube (@YouTube) August 3, 2015
Apparently, YouTube had already started testing these new changes we’re seeing way back in April where there was a tutorial on how to enable it for either Chrome or Firefox.
This update comes after the subtle but important update on the YouTube app for Android where they made it easier to watch vertical videos in their native format unlike before where annoyingly you could only watch these type of videos in landscape form. The updated changes on the YouTube player interface seems to have been rolled globally.
