Less distractions! YouTube starts releasing new video progress bar on Android

Update (01/01/2023) – FM

YouTube started releasing on Friday (30) the new progress bar designed especially to reduce distractions when playing videos on Android. Tested less than two weeks agothe company seems to have decided to advance the change and started to make the update available to all users gradually.

The new progress bar differs from the original one by its color, abandoning the classic shade of red to become gray. The aim of this change is to make video playback on mobile less distracting, as it suits the monochrome tone of basic information such as video title and view count.

For now, the news will gradually become available only to Android users. There is still no prediction of changes in the interface of the web version or application for iOS.

This is a small design update that can improve the experience for users, but there are also big changes that are preparing to reach the stable version of the platform, such as the possibility of watching videos in different languages.

In December, after remaining exclusive to the web version, the “Add to queue” feature was also experimented with on Android and iOS. YouTube is expected to end testing on January 28.

Original text (12/20/2022)

YouTube tests new progress bar on Android that reduces distractions

O YouTube received important updates this year bringing new features and improvements to the platform’s interface to users, improving the browsing experience on both Android and iOS. Just before 2022 ended, the developer released a new update with a new progress bar on Google’s system.

According to information from the Tutto Android portal, the change consists of replacing the red color of the video playback bar with white, making the design more discreet. Despite the change, the previous color continues to be displayed in other areas of the application, such as the video feed and thumbnail mode, for example.

Evidently, this novelty that has been tested by YouTube is intended to improve the experience when watching videos by reducing distractions according to the theme applied on the smartphone. As with other tests, there is no guarantee that this functionality will be implemented in the stable version of the application.

Recently, YouTube has also started testing a new “Add to Queue” feature for playing videos on Android and iOS systems. With this novelty, users can create a playlist with manually ordered videos that will be played automatically by the platform.

See below the white and red band, respectively: