YouTube has undergone a series of significant changes over the past few years, but on Tuesday, all of the pieces finally began to come together. YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan published a blog post explaining everything the team has been working on in recent years while revealing some of the new features coming to the mobile app, the desktop redesign and, for the first time, a new logo.
First and foremost, the YouTube desktop site and mobile app are being overhauled with the Material Design look that now pervades much of Google’s software lineup, including Android and Search. The font and buttons are more pronounced, navigation has been simplified and there are fewer lines, boxes and and dividers splitting up content on the site, which makes the entire experience feel cleaner.
But the redesign is more than just a new look. YouTube is also adding a wide variety of new features to the mobile app, including new Library and Account tabs, the ability to choose the playback speed of a video and vertical videos that actually fill up the screen. More features are in development as well.
But the new logo might be the most surprising change of all. YouTube has been using virtually the same logo for the entirety of its 12-year existence, but the cherry red rectangle that encapsulated “Tube” has been moved to the front of the YouTube wordmark, which Mohan says creates “a more flexible design that works better across a variety of devices, even on the tiniest screens.”
The new design has already begun rolling out, but if you don’t see it when you navigate to YouTube on your browser, just head to YouTube.com/new and opt in. It should load straight to the new design.
