NEW YORK – It’s been a weird few weeks for YouTube. After a couple of controversial experiments came and went — including changes that would see free users locked out of 4K playback and bludgeoned with ads — Google raised the price on its Premium plans for family subscribers throughout much of the world.
Google announced the improvements in a blog post, saying that YouTube’s latest makeover offers a “more modern and immersive viewing experience while improving how users watch videos.”
The first big change can be seen above (right) and it is dynamic color sampling in a new ambient mode. Basically, when you are watching a video in the dark theme, splashes of color are pulled from the video into the app’s UI to create a neat effect.
It’s sort of like how you’d watch a movie at home with the lights low and the colors from your TV reflect throughout surfaces.
And speaking of the dark theme, Google has updated the YouTube dark theme to be even darker.
In the playlist department, YouTube is getting similar visual improvements (below), where a playlist will show you more colors and more details. In the example here, you can see the top video taking on a cover design with bigger buttons and a more visually appealing overall look.
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