YouTube Finally Embraces Google's Material Design, Puts Focus On Content (googleblog.com)

Google's Material Design specs are finally coming to the YouTube desktop site, the company said on Tuesday. The feature isn't rolling out to all just yet, but you can test drive it here. My initial impressions after playing with the new design: lots and lots of white space, but the optional dark theme looks pretty. Here's how the company describes the changes: The key principles of this new design are:
1. Simplicity: The only thing you should be concerned about is watching the content you love. The new design is clean and fresh, thanks to the removal of visuals that can distract from your browsing or watching experience. We're focused on making the content shine!
2. Consistency: The new design is aligned across Google platforms, including the YouTube mobile app, while still providing the features you know and love.
3. Beauty: We strive to combine beauty and purpose to create an effortless experience.

Comments

Make a system any fool can use...

[Anonymous Coward]

and only a fool will want to use it.

Re:Make a system any fool can use...

[Known Nutter]

People will complain about anything. It's a site to share and watch video content, not design your apartment around.

Re:Make a system any fool can use...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its good that you agree that sacrificing usability for design is a bad thing. Design should follow function not "look cool".

Re: Make a system any fool can use...

[ArmoredDragon]

And what usability did they sacrifice? Simpler designs can increase usability if they use better psychological cues that make the exact steps needed to take your desired actions more obvious, and/or if they remove steps required to take the same action.

Re:Make a system any fool can use...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing Material design looks like is amateur garbage.

Re: Make a system any fool can use...

[lgw]

I see just the video, and the YouTube search bar at top. Nothing else. I suspect this is a bug, but talk about minimalist controls and whitespace! Doesn't get simpler than this.

Re:Make a system any fool can use...

[Chas]

Yeah. The new layout somewhat obfuscates functionality.

And the comment system is currently broken in this layout. It doesn't respect carriage returns.

So you wind up with "walloftext"

Re: Make a system any fool can use...

[Anonymous Coward]

I enjoy googles various websites with light grey text on bright white backgrounds. They're real brainiacs over there.

Re: Make a system any fool can use...

[arglebargle_xiv]

Given that the trend in the last 5-10 years has been to discard usability in favour of wannabe hipster wank (examples: Just about any UI ever in that time period that's had a "refresh" or something similar, Win10 probably being the poster child but there are endless other examples), I'm not holding out much hope for what a "UI refresh" will do to Youtube.

Re: Make a system any fool can use...

[ArmoredDragon]

I don't know what you're seeing, but to me it looks mostly the same as it always has, save for some different layouts for the controls and whatnot.

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't look good or bad. Maybe towards bad. I really dislike round icons

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Such minimalist UI/Flat Design in time it's tiring for eyes, it induces fatigue view. Trendy not mean also healthy.

Re:Meh

[ArmoredDragon]

Material design is not a flat UI in that it uses plenty of hints of depth, including overlapping objects, shadows, and gradients. It's also not necessarily minimalist, though it can be. An example of minimalism would be www.google.com. Youtube doesn't seem to embrace that concept that much, on the other hand, as any one screen seems to be filled with graphics and other objects.

Flat UI, on the other hand, is the crap that Microsoft does, and in order to distinguish UI objects in a flat UI, you have to use deeply contrasting colors, contributing to the fisher-price look.

Reject materialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Reject material design.

Re:Reject materialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Material Defender: "Worthless bureaucrats.."

Re:Reject materialism

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact there exists a materialist philosophy, which is not about consumerism or pathological attachment to things and possessions but the grounding of all reality into physical reality - I might be mangling the terms somewhat, what I mean is e.g. the human mind is tied to physical reality, which begets hard sciences but also the conditions of happiness, suffering, compassion or the repertoire of human dealings in general.
This rejects ethereal or mile-high top down abstractions, sophism (also known as typical bullshitting), views that lead to considering animals as soulless automatons, or curbs their influence. (This a personal interpretation)

Two out of three

[steveg]

Well, simplicity I'll grant, and maybe consistency.

But a clean miss on beauty. Flat is ugly. Always has been. Always will be. No matter what's "trendy."

Re:Two out of three

[Anonymous Coward]

I like flat when its done right.
It wasnt done right here at all

Re:Two out of three

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just a rural or suburban retard who can't accept progress.

Re:Two out of three

[Anonymous Coward]

Material Design is disgusting, so you can't really expect any better.

Re:Two out of three

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just a rural or suburban retard who can't accept progress.

And the bigotry, hatred and racism of the left is here, as always and present.

Re:Two out of three

[Anonymous Coward]

Having fun talking to yourself? As a "commie European", i.e someone who believes in democracy and human rights, rather than fascist plutocracy, I have to say this "material design" is a complete abortion and a complete make busy work. It's a waste of time, space and resources, it adds nothing and looks like shit.

Re:Two out of three

[Anonymous Coward]

*proceeds to stuff his fat stomach and bearded triplechin with "healthy" food produced by said rural or suburban retards without whom he would lack the basic progressive knowledge of growing plants that even primitive people know but his neon-burned "progressive" brain does not.*
Ayyyyyyy. You should consider killing yourself for being so stupid that you insult the hands which feed you. That's the act of someone with the mentality of a 12 year old child.

Re:Two out of three

[rtb61]

Still no tool to block crappy uploaders so you now longer see them in search results or anywhere is. Google still annoying arseholes getting you to watch a commercial for a few seconds of crap content, until you realise you got sucked in by a bullshit title and cover photo, yeah, fuck you google.

Re:Two out of three

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked the Atari ST interface.
I didn't use it very much though (having access to the ST infrequently, and they had the software they bought on day one). Too bad the ST was a bit braindead with the monitor limitations (color monitor or TV only does low res and mid res, monochrome monitor only does 1bit high res)

Perhaps Microsoft Dos Shell is a good flat UI if it counts as a flat UI (there seems to be a bit of 3D shade on disk drive icons in graphical mode)

That sums up the flat GUIs I may find enjoyable.
And maybe Atari ST is not that flat : icons are strictly black and white unantialiased but are detailed.
I like how there are only like five icons in the whole OS : program, file, folder, disk drive and trash. Spares you the mystery game about what a hundred overly stylized icons do, and stupidity like not knowing if a looking glass icon is for search or zoom.
Menus, dialogs have an emphasis on text and square corners, like flat UIs, but buttons are made of big black ink so you have to see them.

Re:Two out of three

[Anonymous Coward]

But the more bland and shitty, the more megabytes it requires.
Incidentally, Google is involved in selling hardware (one way or another), all of it requiring to replace the whole computer if you want to double the RAM to keep up with piles of shit.

Re:Two out of three

[ArmoredDragon]

It's not a flat UI. The first giveaway that it isn't is at the very top of the page. The shadow in the search box and the gradient on the search icon both give hints of depth, which is unacceptable in flat UI.

https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

Re:Two out of three

[steveg]

Wow.

It's interesting that the children that have taken over Slashdot immediately make silly assumptions about the demographics and/or politics of other posters -- in all directions -- and none of it corresponds to reality. And they use these assumptions to pick fights.

I guess the adults have all left. Guess there's nothing left here. Thanks for the heads up.

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

They finally changed that very light gray to white! Thank Christ. Also, white can become dark gray! Truly news and comment worthy.

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Now shove your privacy-reminder up your ass, and maybe then youtube becomes usable again. And no, i'm not going to login to disable this shit.

Already running into problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Not liking it at all. Everything is blended together now. Hard to see the different sections.
Also, it has crash my browser twice now. (FF 53 x64)
A lot slower than the old version.
WTF is up with round icons. No pixel on my monitor is round. Stop doing round.

Re: Already running into problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep in mind that this is NOT the finished product, so don't diss on something until its done and finished. When that's done and you still have problems, then either bitch about it or don't use it at all. Its as simple as that. Anyways, I like the dark theme there gonna use as that will have less strain watching videos for those night owl folks out there.

Re: Already running into problems

[Hognoxious]

Keep in mind that this is NOT the finished product, so don't diss on something until its done and finished.

What would be the point in "dissing on" something that's finished? By then it's too late to change it.

What's the deal with the scrollbar at the right?

[grungeman]

Is it really supposed to disappear and move the whole content to the right when the mouse hovers over the sidebar? Or is it not targeted at mouse users?

Dark Theme

[dejitaru]

The best part about this new design is the dark theme, I hope other sites follow, because some sites ( /. included) it's like staring at a light bulb.

Re:Dark Theme

[donaggie03]

How do you enable the dark theme? I'm not seeing it.

Re:Dark Theme

[Known Nutter]

Top right, click on the round logo representing your username, then "Dark Theme: Off" - switch to On.

Re:Dark Theme

[donaggie03]

Thank you, dark does look much better.

Re: Dark Theme

[Anonymous Coward]

Install the Stylish extension for your browser of choice, then install this https://userstyles.org/styles/18192/nightshift-eye-care

Problem solved.

Re: Dark Theme

[Anonymous Coward]

Last Updated June 13, 2012

Seems like a bad idea to use something unmaintained. I would also say that native features > addons.

Re: Dark Theme

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not executable code.

Re: Dark Theme

[Anonymous Coward]

But it is code that will no longer function if DOM elements are moved/renamed/replaced.

Re: Dark Theme

[Anonymous Coward]

Works fine here on every website I visit.

It doesn't do much other than make dark colours light and vice versa.

Re:Dark Theme

[Anonymous Coward]

The *worst* part about this new design is the dark theme

FTFY

Re:Dark Theme

[Anonymous Coward]

Dark themes might be good on LCD.
On CRT, they have too much contrast because of the deep blacks next to blaring white or bright, for every little icon or menu or widget. I wonder if that's similar on OLED or modern VA set up so that black is black.

This doesn't affect me, as long as dark isn't the only option or the default option, or if the theme isn't a bastardized hybrid with some part dark and some part regular (this did happen when youtube presented me some experimental theme during normal operation)
I like white or light gray backgrounds and a good monitor, monitor setting and room lighting are those that make it comfortable (this makes me hate about every laptop or low end LCD monitor I ever used, although e.g. even older imacs and macbooks seem fine)

How to Opt Out?

[Kunedog]

Google's Material Design specs are finally coming to the YouTube desktop site, the company said on Tuesday. The feature isn't rolling out to all just yet, but you can test drive it here.

"Test drive" implies it's temporary. How do I get decent Youtube back? The "test drive" link is http://youtube.com/new?optin=t... but https://www.youtube.com/new?op... doesn't reverse it.

Re:How to Opt Out?

[cervesaebraciator]

Click your name/icon in the top right. At the bottom you'll find an option to "Restore Classic YouTube". This has the added advantage of giving you a chance to tell them why you don't like the new design.

Re:How to Opt Out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Click on the little vertical dots in the upper right to get to settings, tell it to "restore classic youtube"

Re:How to Opt Out?

[Kunedog]

Thx, I found it about two minutes after I posted.

Re:How to Opt Out?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you need to be logged in?

Re:How to Opt Out?

[dknj]

And also the added advantage of speaking your voice to BeauHD and other editors here. If you provide the link without optin=true, you get the actual OPTION to OPT IN.

I miss CmdrTaco.

Re:How to Opt Out?

[Aighearach]

I miss CmdrTaco.

I don't, he sold us down river to these guys, that's how we got here!

Re:How to Opt Out?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess so. I got absolutely no changes with the interface when I clicked the link in the summary.

I never log into Google or Youtube.

Re:How to Opt Out?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you never log in and are fed up with something or want to refresh the filter bubble, delete the cookie.

Usability

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who thinks Usability should be a key design principle?

Re:Usability

[epyT-R]

Usability? That's so 1990s.. Now it's all about aesthetics... ugly ass aesthetics.

Re:Usability

[SpammersAreScum]

Am I the only one who thinks Usability should be a key design principle?

No, you aren't. They've ignored it here, and they screwed it up even worse in the similar Google Voice redesign. Addition of unnecessary whitespace inevitably means the user has to do more work to get the same (useful) information. Google Voice redesign decreased usability -- for no apparent reason -- in other ways as well, but that's probably off-topic here.

Re:Usability

[Gavagai80]

Used to be websites had good desktop/laptop usability and poor phone/tablet usability. Now they have good phone/tablet usability and poor desktop/laptop usability.

Re:Usability

[Merk42]

Or, they didn't ignore it and what they came up with through user testing just happens to not be something you personally like....

or you know, your preferences are law and fact I guess that could be it too.

Re:Usability

[SpammersAreScum]

Or, they didn't ignore it and what they came up with through user testing just happens to not be something you personally like.... or you know, your preferences are law and fact I guess that could be it too.

Oh, it is certainly possible that they found users who felt the new design was more aesthetically pleasing, and felt that that was more important than usability.

Re: Usability

[Anonymous Coward]

>1990s

A E T H S T E T I C

Re:Usability

[Anonymous Coward]

Featureless or optimised for 800x600 Web 1.0 sites seem to work on both. White background, black text, underlined links, split-second loading of 100% of the page, identifiable combo boxes and works on a variety of display resolutions.

Re:Usability

[Merk42]

and certainly possible that they found more users who felt it was more usable even though it's not what you want.
but no, keep doubling down on the whole "Well I don't like it, therefore no one likes it!"

Source: I've done a lot of user testing, and in fact, the whole point of User Testing is that just because a developer/designer/product owner feels X is the best way of doing things, that may not be how the audience in general feels.

Re:Usability

[Anonymous Coward]

Featureless or optimised for 800x600 Web 1.0 sites seem to work on both. White background, black text, underlined links, split-second loading of 100% of the page, identifiable combo boxes and works on a variety of display resolutions.

But oh-so-unhip. Can't have that! They'll lose marketshare among key demographics without eyecatchiness!

Re:Usability

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who thinks Usability should be a key design principle?

No, you aren't. They've ignored it here, and they screwed it up even worse in the similar Google Voice redesign....Google Voice redesign decreased usability -- for no apparent reason -- in other ways as well, but that's probably off-topic here.

The most hilarious of which was removing the ability to dial phone numbers. Seriously.

Glory of Consumption (vomit)

[XparXnoiaX]

The only thing you should be concerned about is watching the content you love.

We have entered the era of the glorification of the consumer. All you should do is consume, and feel happy about it.

Not because they care about you. Because the consumer can be monetized.

Infinite scroll... Meh...

[__aaclcg7560]

I was never a fan of the infinite content scroll. It works well for Pinterest. But not so much for other content websites.

Re:Infinite scroll... Meh...

[epyT-R]

Yup. It prevents me from using CTRL-F to quickly find the text I'm looking for. It also prevents rapid scrolling with the scroll bar (or a fast mouse wheel).

Re:Infinite scroll... Meh...

[Aighearach]

I thought it didn't switch to the new version on my platform at first, and then I started to scroll. I knew I had the new one because it was suddenly super-laggy.

If this is the future, I'll be using a download addon more often. Download what I need, and run, no staying around to browse kittens anymore.

Re:Infinite scroll... Meh...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Home and End for scrolling all the time.

Didn't try the beta

[Anonymous Coward]

So... do we get to see a video's rating in the search/related results like it used to be? Because removing that feature was one of the dumbest moves I've ever seen.

Example: If you tend to wander around in the *science* areas of youtube, having ratings visible is the easiest way to avoid entering the loony 'free-energy' areas.

Slow response, looks like ass

[decipher_saint]

Got this for about 2 hours yesterday while I was editing some video and two things immediately struck me:
(This is all running Firefox with no-plugins on a Core i7 with 16 GB of memory)

1. Almost all the UI elements lagged, my suspicion is that content is loaded as needed. The comments section has been loading on demand for a while but now it seems to extend to other functions too now

2. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I beheld none; smaller lighter fonts, less contrast, burying things under modal dialogs (seriously why is a popup necessary for sharing the URL?)

Speaking of modal dialogs some of the notifications now appear under the video layer (making it impossible to interact with)

Google has a habit of testing crap like this on a subset of us and waiting for annoyed responses to fill up the Google Product Forums, I haven't checked to see what's there today but my guess is other users experienced similar behavior (unless I just got lucky in which case "go me")

Re:Slow response, looks like ass

[bogaboga]

I hate it for a different reason: -

The inability to independently have major site elements independently scroll. I want to read comments while still having sight of playing video. The same applies to related videos on the right.

To me, grade this as a C+

Re:Slow response, looks like ass

[decipher_saint]

Now that's an enhancement

Keep the primary content front and centre while allowing you to interact with the rest of the site.

An interface for dumb people

[bluegutang]

More white space
= less words
= less content
= less thinking
= more scrolling until you actually find what you want.

I suppose Youtube's most profitable customers are unable to deal with a screen packed full of information, but I'd prefer not to waste my time scrolling until I find what I need.

Re:An interface for dumb people

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is good at this thing called "search". If you are scrolling to find what you want on YouTube then you are using it wrong.

Re:An interface for dumb people

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Scrolling through the suggested content.

2. Scrolling through comments.

FAD

[micahraleigh]

2 years ago it was skeuomorphic now it is material design. 2 years from now it will be something else.

The packaging changes a little and the older front end devs get force retired.

How is this an improvement for anyone? It's just seems like a hamster wheel.

Re:FAD

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say the age of skeuomorphic dated back to the 80s, and only in the past few years have a few people gotten obsessed with ditching that sentiment (which could be fine), but everyone trying to impersonate Google is not exactly better...

Re:FAD

[Anonymous Coward]

...but everyone trying to impersonate Google is not exactly better...

Yeah! YouTube shouldn't try to impersonate Google...wait..

Call me conservative but

[Kartu]

I hate what they did with Android 7.
Icons with rounded corners (mkay, I can kinda disable it), but why, dear google, isn't it EASIER to quickly recognize icons when they have different shape?
The quick access bar has become barely readable with tiny icons drawn with thin line.

Oh, and I don't like the circle icons of "material" thing at all either.

Oh, and I seem to like the touchwiz by the known company.

Samsung should be paying me, I guess.

Way better

[fulldecent]

Way less bullshit, 100% better. I already forget what the old one looked like.

Re:Way better

[Anonymous Coward]

Way less bullshit, 100% better. I already forget what the old one looked like.

Yeah, if you are a low-IQ fucking moron "consumer".

Innovate into obscurity

[xession]

Youtube has pretty much been on a downward trend in UI usability since Google purchased the site. Every time they decide to "update" the interface, it seems to keep on steam rolling back in time. This "content focused" approach has left little presented up front, forcing users to go through menus to find the other shit the site can do. 2006 Youtube might look dated, but usability was much better overall, as was stability as I recall. With this latest iteration, this leaves me feeling like I'm using Windows 2.0, next will probably move us back to Windows 1.0 like functionality and I can't wait until everything is done from a terminal, including watching the video in hex!

Damn good times ahead folks!

Re:Innovate into obscurity

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, a command line interface for the youtube site doesn't sound like a half bad idea honestly.
I'd be willing to try a navigation scheme that was just a command line with the ability to cd to a channel name and ls | grep to find a video title. Remove everything on the page except the input line, scrollback buffer and current playing video please.

Re:Innovate into obscurity

[Aighearach]

If I could browse it in lynx and have the content play through vlc, I would love it.

Re:Innovate into obscurity

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet they want to force users to use menus so as to trick them into logging in.

ALSO I have just try loading it with javascript blocked and it only shows a blank page with a faded line, 10% below the top.
Current youtube is browsable with javascript off ffs.

A website with zero content when javascript is turned off is hardly acceptable and it might be another "made for IE6^H^H^H Chrome version 69" pile of bullshit anyway.

Suggested Video Pop-Ins?

[ohnocitizen]

Will this simple clean design remove the pop-in videos that show up towards the end of a video, and don't seem to be removable? Because those are so distracting they render the videos unwatchable.

It's crap

[DontBeAMoran]

All I see is a page with a vertically scrolling frame on the left and window that's too wide on the right so the content is cropped on both sides. Are asshole designers just assuming everyone has a widescreen monitor?

FUCK. YOU.

Re:It's crap

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a quick look, and all the statistics I could find were that amongst non-mobile web browsers, non-widescreen screens made up less than 5% of the total. So for statistically significant values of "everyone", yeah, everyone uses a widescreen monitor.

Having said that: I've got three browser windows open right now; two are approximately 4:3, one is portrait. Almost all mobile browsing is portrait. Assuming stuff about the display your site is going to be viewed on and the interface it's going to is stupid, which is precisely why these white-spacey reflowing large-hit-box designs are everywhere.

I honestly can't see what you mean regarding the youtube design regardless of aspect ratio; it looks a lot more spaced out than the old one, but I'm not having problems with cropped content. If anything, it's reacting better to being bunged in a smaller window than the old design. If you're actually having a problem, you should get in touch with the developers and let them know - that's what these trial periods are for.

Re:It's crap

[Anonymous Coward]

My monitor is only 12 years old lol. It's also real 4:3 (not 5:4) and I do enjoy watching some 4:3 content sometimes. One was a semi-good made-for-TV martial arts movie from the 90s I watched the other day, on youtube. The endless selection of full length movies is suspicious. So, I'm enjoying a bout of movie piracy right on Youtube, with plausible deniability since it's I don't know the legal status of the uploading of any little film I never heard of.

Anyway, I enjoyed the movie, and the 4:3 aspect ratio was great in this as it focuses on the action and people and is similar to the useful human field of vision. It also fills my screen. Then, it's a throwback to the 90s (and early 00s) when TV was TV i.e. a waste of time and a load of bullshit and advertisement, but better made, without 3D whooshing shit every minute, more focused on actual fiction and with less zooming on breasts, cocks and asses of wannabe Kardashian/Hilton whatever and wannabe 20 to 30-year-old Biebers.

Maybe some day I'll leapfrog to something like 3840x1080 monitor (this exists!) which will about simulate a triple 5:4 ish screen (litterally, there's room for three 1280x1024 VMs or PC emulators running whatever random shit, even if the guest graphics driver or OS is incompatible with arbitrary or on the fly resolutions, with 56 pixels of height left for task bar and window title bars)
Maybe I'll be able to do something useful like Quake 1 coop with three players, three gamepads. I wonder if the single-thread performance of current CPUs allows to run Quake 1 in Dosbox at 1280x1024.

If you're a web dev (not you) that makes sites that shit up on 1280 width, then fuck you.

UX Worst in the Industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Googles UX gurus and its "designers" are beyond doubt, The Worst in the Industry. Yet, they think, and their creepy sycophant fan-butt-bootlickers think, they are the best that ever lived. Their hubris and arrogance are evident to any who actually look.

Pretty soon a page will just be a puff of smoke on a white background and you'll have to guess what the page is. And that will cost you a dollar.

It only needs to do one thing

[OrangeTide]

The entire UI can be playing a video, done. The comments are going to be total trash anyways.

One thing missing from the description

[Indiana Joe]

Simple, consistent, beautiful.... does that mean no ads?

Re:One thing missing from the description

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they still haven't added ads on Youtube. Can you imagine? That would suck almost as much as if they put ads on Slashdot.

Re:One thing missing from the description

[Aighearach]

There used to be a checkbox to turn ads on and off on slashdot, but I think it was broken because I still never saw any.

People talk about ads all the time, but I haven't seen an ad since last time I watched PBS and there was 2 minutes of sponsor listings at the top of the hour.

NEW THING BAD!!

[Merk42]

I don't like it!
Therefore no one likes it!
Therefore they should have spent time doing something completely unrelated that those same people would have no idea how to implement!

Re:NEW THING BAD!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If it ain't broke, break it so that you'll look like you're doing valuable work.

Re:NEW THING BAD!!

[Anonymous Coward]

>...they should have spent time doing something completely unrelated ...

As professionals, as DESIGN professionals, they should ALREADY KNOW one does not put thin light-grey fonts against a backlight screen. Maybe in print, but not a lit screen. It does not come across well to everyone.

These and other BASICS are directly related to what they're doing and they should know better upon release. Sure, ask for opinions to polish it up. But the fact that users are having to 'educate them' is an insult.

Re:NEW THING BAD!!

[AmiMoJo]

The issue I have is bit the UI, it's the recommendation system.

- It always suggests stuff from my subscriptions, stuff I skipped over. I skipped it for a reason.

- When I refresh it shows the same stuff, that I didn't watch because I'm not interested.

- No way to block channels.

- It gets very myopic and lacks variety.

Re:NEW THING BAD!!

[Merk42]

You do know there is a small menu where you can choose "not interested" for the video suggestions right?
Otherwise how is is supposed to the know the different between a video you don't want to watch and a video you aren't going to watch right now?

Re:NEW THING BAD!!

[AmiMoJo]

I use that a lot, but it doesn't really take the hint very well. I even give a reason every time.

Dark. Dark! DARK!

[emil]

It appears to me that few people within Google have ever had to use their phones within a crowded theater. The material UI is too bright, and attracts too much attention.

A mobile UI must consider unobtrusiveness and subtlety. Material design is not so hot.

Re:Dark. Dark! DARK!

[Zaelath]

"had to"?

Re:Dark. Dark! DARK!

[Anonymous Coward]

nah, it appears you can't click the settings button and then click dark. it's always funny how normal people hate dumbing down of things, and there's always the stupid masses like you who are completely baffled if the option they need is behind one button, first on the list of settings. what are places like google to do - they do want your money, but designing something for you would literally make it unusable for anyone with an over 80 iq. do you have velcro shoes so you don't trip?

Re:Dark. Dark! DARK!

[Aighearach]

Just turn it off, asshole.

Re:Dark. Dark! DARK!

[Anonymous Coward]

The dark option was just added in. How would he guess that he exists?You could have just told him politely.

Bring back the star/thumb rating system

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring back the star/thumb rating system you jackasses!

Simple, consistent

[Anonymous Coward]

Simplicity? Got that. Blank white page with no controls.

Consistency? Check! Blank on "mobile" too!

Bravo, google! Well done!

slower and less safe by design.

[Anonymous Coward]

I only have one objection to the new format. It does not display anything unless I turn javascript on. I liked being able to find links with javascript off since it is faster and uses less bandwith. Then there is that security thing you risk using javascript. Any pictures of the new format for my viewing (dis?)pleasure?

All I see is a message about downloading Chrome

[caseih]

Using Palemoon here and all I see when I go to the new url is a page advertising Google Chrome and saying my browser isn't supported. Apparently I'm not allowed to even see the new youtube site, which suits me fine. Google Voice's material design makeover turned it into a steaming pile that's ridiculously slow and javascript heavy. Sigh. Good thing I never actually use the youtube web site. I do all my youtube viewing through mpv or youtube-dl. Such a better experience!

So this is that "dark mode" from two weeks ago

[LocalH]

https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

I did that two weeks ago for the dark mode UI. I went to the opt-in link just now, and got "you're already seeing the new experience".

Changed UI again

[guruevi]

They seem to be changing the UI every 2 weeks it seems like. Every time I go to YouTube, the location of the "add to Watch Later" button has changed. In less than one year it went from the top right corner to the bottom left corner, then to the bottom right corner, for about a week it was moved to a separate dropdown, then back to the bottom right corner but now you had to hover over it, now it's moved to the top right corner. Pretty much every button I use has to be hunted down again on every visit.

Come up with a UI design that doesn't suck and stick to it. Changing it for the sake of change is disruptive. I'd hope you have UI designers in your team.

Also, 5MB of JavaScript and HTML (not counting the preview images or Ajax calls and with AdBlock enabled) before you even render a single page is a bit excessive. That's 5MB of "framework" before you even load data.

bring back the paged comment section

[Anonymous Coward]

Most YouTube comments are useless, but sometimes when you're looking for the name of a song used in a vid, comments can helpful. If they weren't hidden away by endless scrolling that is.

MD is the opposite of beauty

[MoarSauce123]

Material Design is flat, boxy, and cold without providing clear delineations of areas in the UI. It is just a fad that will be shunned a few months from now when someone comes up with the next "best" thing.

Only one thing I don't like.

[SpiralBound]

The look and function is great. Nice and clean. Google gets full marks for this.

However, I really don't like the infinite page length. It just keeps scrolling and scrolling, and scrolling, and...

Gee, thanks Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't even opt-in so I can write a bad comment about your new UI disaster.
Thanks.