Pill-shaped buttons and bars with more rounded corners everywhere
YouTube is a constantly evolving platform, unafraid to experiment with changes (even when that means up to 11 unskippable ads for some users). To no one’s surprise, we frequently see handy integrations with YouTube Music, along with the occasional design change for the UI. Right now, the platform seems to be working on a few significant tweaks to the web interface, across both mobile and desktop.
If you visit the YouTube website using your computer or mobile device’s web browser, 9to5Google notes that you may see the topic buttons under the search bar now using rectangular buttons with rounded corners instead of pill-shaped ones. The Explore button is also getting updated to live at the left-hand extremity of this row of buttons — a spot formerly occupied by the default All button.
The Explore button is on the far left here, but rounded corners aren’t
The refreshed interface resembles YouTube Music
Sharp rectangular video thumbnails pick up rounded corners on the homepage, search results page, and video playback pages. The web interface for mobile is adopting pill-shaped Like, Dislike, Share, Report, and Save buttons. The same refreshed UI is also starting to make its way to the website for computers, along with a few exclusive bits and pieces we first saw on the YouTube Music app for Android.
The old YouTube website UI vs. the refreshed one
Maybe the biggest change is a new deep black AMOLED-friendly dark theme, instead of just gray. YouTube also gets a pill-shaped search bar and new gray outlines for horizontally scrolling sections, like the one for Shorts.
9to5Google mentions that the interface is still in testing and doesn’t appear to be widely available just yet. In our testing, we found some of the mobile website’s changes, like the Explore button, consistently visible on all our phones, but it might take a while for everyone to get everything. Importantly, YouTube’s refreshed UI for desktops seems to be taking its sweet time, and we’ve only seen it on one device so far. Ideally, YouTube maintains a cohesive design on all devices, so hopefully a widespread website update shouldn’t be too far out.
