YouTube Gets New Logo, Material Design Desktop Website

YouTube has a bunch of new features coming to its desktop as well as mobile platform. The massive update, announced in a blog post, comes along a new YouTube logo.

Design things first. The new YouTube logo is a transition from the previous, 12-year-old logo. The red highlight of the ‘Tube’ is no longer visible, but a similar icon, which is to portray a TV-esque graphic, sits next to ‘YouTube.’ Witness the new YouTube logo in all its glory on YouTube or right below.

Not only the logo, but the entire YouTube experience has been refined, all thanks to UI/UX Mavens over at YouTube. The updated YouTube desktop site has now adopted Material Design aesthetics officially. Until now what we knew is YouTube’s been testing Material Design since past few months. And the test is now finished for a stable build.

There’s also a new theme that you can turn on while watching videos, especially at night, and it’s called Dark Theme. The YouTube Dark Theme turns your background dark to give you a better cinematic look. Sounds cool? I love it actually!

There’s also tweaking in the YouTube mobile app, with tabs being moved to the bottom of the screen for quick access. It also added new Library and Account tabs. Oh, the header is white as well.

Now coming to the in-app features. Remember the 10-second forward/backward gesture in YouTube videos? Well, YouTube is adding more to gesture control. You’ll soon be able to play next or previous video by simply swiping to the right or left, respectively. The video speed toggle that allowed for custom playing speed on the web version of YouTube is now available on the mobile counter-part as well.

Plus, the YouTube video player will soon be a real responsive, adaptive player, with the ability to seamlessly change shape to match the video format currently playing, such as vertical, square or horizontal.

Do you like the new YouTube logo and desktop redesign?