Google’s video platform YouTube has announced a host of new features for its users. The company is rolling out a new look to YouTube app along with several features that offer a more modern and immersive viewing experience while also improving how users watch videos. The features were announced by YouTube via a blog post. “YouTube just celebrated its 17th birthday earlier this year and we wondered if it was time to give it a small makeover”, the company writes in the post.
Precise seeking, a darker dark theme and pinch to zoom are some of the features coming to YouTube app and desktop. Let’s take a look them one-by-one
Pinch to zoom
With pinch to zoom, users will now be able to easily zoom in and out of a video. The feature will be available for both iOS or Android phone app. Google says that the video will stay zoomed in unless prompted, so you can enjoy the rest of the video in greater detail.
Precise seeking
Precise seeking is the most notable feature rolling out to YouTube. The feature will allow users to press and hold on the screen to see a visual timeline of the video. Swiping it up or down will display a row of thumbnails in the video player, enabling users to ‘make fine-tuned adjustments to get to the exact part in each video’. The feature will come handy for users watching a tutorial or educational videos on your phone.
“Precise seeking builds on our recent improvements to video navigation that help you quickly find the parts you’re most interested in. We launched the ability to long press anywhere on the player to seek and to double tap with two fingers to skip chapters. We also added a graph that shows frequently replayed moments in a video”, the post mentions.
Additional feature coming to YouTube is ambient mode with dynamic color sampling. The ambient mode introduces a subtle effect so the app background color adapts to match the video. This feature will be available on web and mobile in dark theme. “We were inspired by the light that screens cast out in a darkened room and wanted to recreate the effect so viewers were drawn right into the content and the video takes an even greater focus on our watch page”, says Google introducing the feature. YouTube has also updated dark theme “to be even darker so the colors truly pop on your screen.” This will roll out on web, mobile and Smart TVs.
Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates & Live Business News.