YouTube adds Material Design, dark mode and clutter free look to desktop website

YouTube is currently working hard to revive its glory and appeal. One of the first steps in this initiative is to redesign the desktop website. YouTube has announced in a blog post that it is upgrading the desktop website with its home grown Material Design that made a debut a few years ago. The new layout of the desktop website removes the clutter and focuses on the content. The new desktop website has been built with a new framework called Polymer that promises quicker feature development. Polymer has already been put in place to create the Dark Theme for YouTube where you can change the background to black from white to reduce screen glare while watching videos in the dark.


Currently this feature is open to select users. You can enable the changes by visiting #-Link-Snipped-# and opt to try these changes. If you like or dislike the changes you can report to YouTube by using the feedback option from the Account Menu. You are also given the option of reverting back to the current layout by selecting ‘Restore classic YouTube’ from the Account Menu. First thing we noticed about the change is that the font is darker and there are no unwieldy hyperlink highlighting to distract you from the video thumbnail. We have enclosed screenshots of the new (light and dark) and old layout as seen on the YouTube India trending page below.


YouTube, the video streaming website where you can find almost a billion hours of video to keep you occupied for several lifetimes has been going through some tough times. After repeated media attacks, major advertisers pulled out of YouTube. YouTube had to clamp down on content on its website by demonetising videos which even slightly breach its family friendly guidelines. Its most popular content creator PewDiePie had almost a third of his videos demonetised and had to turn to Twitch and sponsor only chat enabled streams to earn money. Content creators are being forced to create family friendly content in a place where popular film studios like Yash Raj Films and TV producers like Balaji had turned to create edgy out-of-the-box content. The future of YouTube lies in a limbo and this design change does not help the bigger problem.

Source: #-Link-Snipped-#