YouTube brings a new video interface to Android TV, Fire TV [Gallery]

Ben Schoon | Sep 25 2020 - 7:33 am PT

YouTube has essentially the same app across TV platforms, and over the past week it’s been rolling out a revamped video interface to some platforms. Here’s a quick look at the new YouTube UI rolling out on Android TV, Fire TV, and probably other platforms.

Over the past two weeks or so, a server-side change to the YouTube apps on Android TV and Fire TV have switched up the look of the video player UI. This change keeps emphasis on the video at all times, even when the seek bar appears.

Instead of having a large title appear above the seek bar, the title is much smaller and now present at the top of the screen. The interface is further cleaned up by hiding most supplemental UI elements under an overflow button; those elements include like/dislike, report, quality, and others. This isn’t all that different from the previous interface, but the buttons themselves are smaller now.

This UI change also ditches the play/pause and skip buttons entirely, leaving users with only a seek bar and a row of recommended videos available with a scroll down. It’s a clean look, but a jarring change, too. You can see these changes in action on a Fire TV below. It looks identical on Android TV.

YouTube has made changes to its TV interface quite a few times in the past, but this is certainly one of the biggest we’ve seen to date. It’s likely this interface will expand to other platforms soon, but we have no specific evidence of that just yet.

Thanks Steve!