Google has updated most of its applications to Material Design, after first introducing the design guidelines at I/O 2014. But, now it seems that YouTube for Web is finally getting its dose of Material Design and the changes are currently being tested with a limited set of users, who will then seek out bugs and provide feedback on the change.
We got the first glimpse of Material Design on YouTube, when Google introduced the sister product, YouTube Gaming to the world, just months ago. But, let’s take a closer look at what all elements have been kept intact and what has been swapped out from the new design for the Web.
The new Material UI is modern and much cleaner than before. You can now easily spot that this new version has taken the Material Design pill, as the new Search Bar looks all-too familiar at first look. It’s the same Search Bar that is invariably used on Android and other Google products. Plus, the upload icon and the overflow menu(look for the three dots on the top-right corner) have replaced the grey upload button and the Google+ notification icon. Also, talking about grey, the subtle grey background in the old YouTube design is now replaced by a clean all White background. The hamburger menu on the left, still remains quite the same showing the trending, history, music and your subscriptions, but due to Material Design makeover, we now have fluent animations on the platform, which is a welcome change!
On digging deeper, we see how the User Channel pages have been redesigned, and yes, there’s a huge material design overhaul there too. The smaller square profile picture and cover photo have been swapped out for a more bigger round profile picture design, and a large cover encompassing the whole width of the screen. The Subscribe and Support buttons are more raised and upfront, the top matter now shows distinct colors associated with the channel(like Red for MKBHD). The tabbed design for Home, Videos, Playlist, Likes, etc. has still been retained but updated according to the Material guidelines, bringing in animations to make it more snappy and fast.
The video player, however, is still very-much the same, but that’s no big issue because Google had just introduced a small design update to it, a couple weeks ago. But, what’s good to see that when you switch to the Cinema Mode, the navigation bar on the top changes from the distracting white to dark black, and blends with the pitch black darkness of the video player.
Now, you must be wondering, Can you get the new updated Material YouTube on your browser? Well, of course, a Reddit user by the name, giorgiomarinel, has listed out the steps which seem to be working only on Chrome browser and can be applied only if you’re logged out of YouTubex.(Note: we’ve tried out the Material Design update ourselves, and we got stuck at the same roadblocks, so follow the steps carefully)
1) go to https:www.youtube.com/?gl=US
2) open the developer tools (ctrl + shift + i)
3) go to the `Resources´ tab and delete the VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE cookie for the youtube domain
4) go to the console and define the VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE cookie using the following command:document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=Qa1hUZu3gtk;path=/;domain=.youtube.com";5) reload the page
You can also reuse your VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE cookie.
Overall, our final verdict after spending a good couple hours with this Material update is that this definitely is a refreshing change for YouTube, and we would love to see the makeover implemented and released for the masses to enjoy soon.
Follow the steps mentioned above and comment below your thoughts on the new updated Material design YouTube!
