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YouTube says goodbye to decade-old video player UI, but users hate the new design
(www.androidauthority.com)
That's always the case.
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
467 points (96.8% liked)
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I mean, they could stop messing with things that aren't broken for once...
Eh, it’s a fine line tbh. Not that I enjoy defending Google.
You get both “this UI hasn’t changed in a decade” and “this UI is perfect never change it” in relatively equal amounts. The rest honestly don’t care either way.
Imagine if they actually brought back "options" and let you choose between changes rather than force them on you.
That would turn into spaghetti code and unmaintainable tech debt really fast. Now every time you make a change you have to make sure it doesn't break previous stylesheets, or you need to run different versions of the same codebase for each stylesheet that will need updating for security vulnerabilities and stakeholder whims.
Not really. At least if you plan to have it customizable in the first place.
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Because the seek bar overlaps the video as it is playing, and because the drag button is huge whenever you mouseover it, it is much harder to locate chapter marker visually.
Change for the sake of change is not good.
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Neat, didn't notice since they perma banned me for watching without ads via freetube I believe.
Ive just been downloading videos direct with yt-dlp, but I think I'm going to extend it into a bash script which fetches the RSS of the channels I want, downloads them if they haven't been downloaded, and then deletes them after they have been watched and after a certain amount of time has passed, or if I have marked them for deletion.
I'm using Pinchflat to do that as well. It can download vídeos from Youtube channels I follow using yt-dlp and checks automatically fpr new videos. Check it out, it might be similar to what you want to do
Wonderful, not surprised it exists already, Thanks!
Ive just been downloading videos direct with yt-dlp, but I think I’m going to extend it into a bash script which fetches the RSS of the channels I want, downloads them if they haven’t been downloaded, and then deletes them after they have been watched and after a certain amount of time has passed, or if I have marked them for deletion.
I wrote something a while back in bash that pulls down a channel with yt-dlp, remembers already-downloaded stuff, and doesn't redownload. Has a menu interface showing a list of "subscribed" channels to pull from. If you want, I'll throw you a copy.
I'd do stuff like this with caution, as YouTube temp-IP-banned me from anonymous use for something like a month after I sucked down the contents of an enormous channel in a relatively-short time. At the very least, I'd suggest having it put a cap on how much it downloads by default so that you don't inadvertently pull down way more than expected and run into trouble with YouTube. My own script doesn't presently have such a cap.
I'm currently yanking everything over a VPN connection from a provider that I trust and I'm not collecting anything as enormous as entire channels. With this considered along with the fact that this is outside the bounds of a user account (I don't believe EULA can come into play as a result), I don't think I could get in much trouble with them outside of having to change VPN endpoints occasionally if they decide to block out some IP (On one or two occasions I have gotten a message back from yt-dlp noting to sign in to prove I am not a bot).
I appreciate the offer on the script, however I think I will build my own as it is not an urgent matter for me and I consider it a good exercise in practicing my skills with programming. I've been looking to build my own RSS reader for a while, and I think this is probably a good use case for this as well.
Thanks!
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YouTube can do whatever they want, you think that give a damn about the people? Noooopppppeeeee
And you think people will do anything more than just bitch about it? Noooopppppeeeee
With recent events, yeeeeeeep. More and more people are protesting with their wallets. Either google getting told to break off companies and/or sell them (e.g. Chrome), they’re going to make some crazy moves for your dollar and that will trigger the peak of the outcry and you’ll see it happen. It’s not a noppppe or yepppp situation, it’s “when”. Better now than later.
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I'm not defending google here, but I'm sure a decent chunk of the complaints are just bitching because "change bad!"
I haven't seen the change yet and I'm sure there are legitimate complaints as well, but us online folk tend to detest even the smallest changes and go a bit overboard in our complaining sometimes.
"you can no longer hover on the volume slider and scroll or even use the up/down keys to adjust the audio"
That, for sure, is one of the most garbage changes imaginable.
Someone conciously had to go out of their way to remove functionality there.
Maybe there's a reason for it, but I still think it's a shit change.
Speaking as a software dev, that’s probably not the case. They probably started completely from scratch and so the inclusion of features depends on reimplementing them on the new platform. It could be as simple as not being ready yet or maybe stats show them that so few people use the feature that they don’t find it worth reimplementing it.
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The only legitimate complaint I have is I use a 4k monitor at 150% scaling. YouTube, in its design genius, decided that it should show me three videos per row, at like half the screen.
Thankfully with Google I was able to find something that helps
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What a great day to be a grayjay user lol
the new design looks like it came from ten years ago
The huge Thumb nails on the home page are ridiculous. Makes it harder to find content I want to watch. If you zoom out it will only show 4 horizontal thumbnails, Max.
Agreed. It feels like a UI designed for little children or senior citizens.
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I prefer the old one, but it's really not much of a difference. New one looks a bit cheaper, like something you'd see on piracy sites or something.
Also just realised Jellyfin basically has the old YouTube design. Don't know if YT was first with it, but if so it was pretty influential, think it's quite common in many players.
Looks like they just adopted material you design. It's a 'whatever' change for me.
Oh man, I remember when this was the new one
It looks exactly the same just a little different skin