Google quietly redesigns YouTube video embeds w/ cleaner look, channel shortcut

Ben Schoon | Oct 18 2018 - 10:08 am PT

YouTube is constantly changing up various aspects of its design, and today we’re noticing that the platform has quietly made a big change. YouTube video embeds have a clean new look that offers up some handy new shortcuts as well.

Over the past 24 hours or so, Google has quietly released a redesign for YouTube video embeds. This format is commonly used across the web to place videos from the platform directly on a website, you can even see it in the footer of each article in the 9to5 network. Now, Google has tweaked the design slightly and it has a pretty big effect on the overall look.

Versus the previous design, the biggest change you’ll find here is a new channel shortcut in the top left corner of the embed. When hovered over, this shortcut displays the full channel name, total number of subscribers, and an option to subscribe and turn on upload notifications. On the right side of the embed, there are also the standard sharing and “Watch Later” options.

As for the player itself, nothing else has changed. This new top bar still shows at the top of the embed when a user’s cursor hovers over the video. It’s certainly a small update, but in terms of looks it’s a great refresh which may even result in better channel growth for creators. You can see a few examples of the new embed style below.