How the new, darker YouTube look compares to the old design [Gallery]

Announced on Monday, YouTube’s new, darker design is being actively rolled out. The way YouTube is laid out isn’t fundamentally changing, but taken together these tweaks are a more drastic upgrade than what was telegraphed earlier in the week.

On Android and iOS, you’ll be greeted with a “New look, still YouTube” prompt after getting the server-side update. Make sure to download the latest version of mobile apps. “Pinch to zoom to full screen” is highlighted on the next page, and you can zoom in up to 8x.

If YouTube’s dark theme is enabled, the first change you’ll notice is how the background is darker (#0F0F0F), but not completely black. It matches YouTube Music and it’s something people have wanted in mobile apps for a long time.

In the Library tab, you will notice that the video thumbnails now have rounded corners, and this change is also applied to the web redesign. To elevate playlists, YouTube now shows a cover thumbnail at the top, although you’ll see fewer videos upfront. The pill-shaped buttons are put to greater use for editing and downloading, which are now placed in circles.

L : old | A: New

The next set of changes can be found on the video page. By default, Ambient Mode is enabled so that the top and bottom of what you’re watching bleeds into the status bar and the video description below, respectively. It will take some getting used to and works best with bright colors versus dull colors. Luckily, you can turn it off by tapping the settings gear in the top-right corner and tapping on the fourth menu item.

We were inspired by the light cast by screens in a darkened room and wanted to recreate the effect so that viewers were drawn directly into the content and the video focused even more on our watch page.

L : old | A: New

Under the video, tapping anywhere opens descriptions, but YouTube now uses “…more” instead of a chevron. Also, the links have been replaced with pills that include the title of the video for a rather nice preview. The channel name appears next, while the Google service has updated the subscribe button to no longer be red. (Chain pages have been slightly tweaked to be a bit cleaner.)

Next is a carousel of key actions such as thumbs up/down, share, create, download, thank, cut and save. All these buttons are placed in pads. The top comment is now highlighted more prominently on a map.

On desktop, YouTube.com is getting several material theme tweaks that aren’t present on mobile. For example, the carousel just below the search bar now uses rounded corner rectangles instead of pills while the equally rounded video thumbnails are much more pronounced here.

Beyond the darker theme, the video page receives similar changes to the layout below the video, while the ambient mode is a little nicer here. This bleed extends to the side stream of videos and looks rather elegant on a large screen.

This new YouTube is still rolling out and not yet widely available.

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