YouTube homepage redesign will bring Material You tweaks, black dark theme

Abner Li | Sep 24 2022 - 4:15 pm PT

In recent weeks, YouTube has been testing a redesign of the video screen, and Material You tweaks are now coming to the homepage. The video site is clearly working on a big overhaul of its clients for all platforms.

Over the past day, this redesign has briefly appeared for two users on desktop and mobile web. Starting with the latter platform (Safari for iPad in this case), we have the carousel of different topics switch to rectangles with rounded corners instead of pills, while “Explore” now appears at the very left. This is similar to mobile as the center tab on the bottom bar is now for “Shorts.”

Meanwhile, thumbnails now feature rounded corners on the homepage, as well as in search and the video page. We again see the pill-shaped buttons for thumbs up/down, Share, Save, and Report.

There are more changes on the desktop web homepage. Most notably, there’s a true/AMOLED black dark theme instead of gray. There’s a pill-shaped search field, while the topics carousel has also been updated. It comes as YouTube Music for Android is also switching to this design, with the streaming service already using a black background. Additionally, some carousels, like for Shorts, are housed in separate boxes with faint gray outlines.

YouTube’s homepage redesign is still in testing and has not widely rolled out yet. It’s not persistent for the people that have encountered it.

9to5Google’s Take

YouTube has historically maintained its own design language compared to other Google apps. These recent tweaks to buttons, the search field, and other UI elements follow the latest Material You guidance in a sign that YouTube might be closing the visual gaps. YouTube is clearly working to modernize its look, and it will presumably be announced sooner than later if more people are already seeing the redesign.