YouTube’s website is a-changing: here’s what you need to know

YouTube is finally polishing its dated, tired and inflexible website layout to better suit the needs of its more than one billion users.

The company updated the world in a blog post this week, detailing its “redesign of the desktop experience that highlights your favourite videos and creators while making YouTube easier and more fun to use”.

If you’re pining for an interface change this very instance, you might need to take a seat. The Google-owned company is only rolling out these chances to select individuals during a feedback and bug-quashing stage. You might be able to access a few features, but not all.

But the improvements nonetheless seem to add value to the experience.

Let’s take a look at a few.

YouTube’s Dark Mode is now finally available

For one, if you love your eyes, Dark Mode is finally an option. It’s now available in the top-right hamburger menu alongside the “Sign In” button. Tap it, scroll down to Dark Theme, and tap it.

A sub-menu should appear detailing how the theme works, with a toggle below the explainer.

If you’ve used YouTube Gaming before, the look and feel will be quite similar. The background is rendered a comfortable black, while the text and descriptions are painted white and grey respectively.

“Developed to cut down on glare and let you take in the true colours of the videos you watch, Dark Theme turns your background dark throughout your entire YouTube experience,” Brian Marquardt, YouTube’s product manager writes on its blog.

“This is only the beginning — you can look forward to more powerful new features coming soon!”

Sleeker, simpler design with quicker updates

Secondly, YouTube will adopt more of Android’s Material Design philosophy, focusing primarily on simplicity, consistency and beauty.

“The only thing you should be concerned about is watching the content you love,” Marquardt notes.

“The new design is clean and fresh, thanks to the removal of visuals that can distract from your browsing or watching experience.”

Additionally, the Material Design-like interface will allow Google to better align desktop YouTube’s look and feel to its app offerings.

And well, we all love pretty things, don’t we?

“We strive to combine beauty and purpose to create an effortless experience,” Marquardt adds.

Notably, all this is enabled by a new framework YouTube’s employing dubbed Polymer. The company notes that the change will promote “quicker feature development”.

You can try a few of YouTube’s new features, including Dark Mode and a tweaked, simpler interface, by heading to the company’s “new” portal.

“We’re still working on the new site, so we hope you’ll try it out now and let us know what you think!”