YouTube recently revealed its plans to add multiple new features to its mobile app. Precise Seeking is one feature coming to the YouTube app. This feature will allow mobile users to see a visual timeline of the video better than before. You press and hold on to the screen to see a visual timeline for the video, then you can seek forwards and back to find the precise moment you need (you can see this in action below). You can also double-tap with two fingers to skip a chapter.
Pinch to Zoom is another useful feature that allows you to view only a portion of the video. You could already use the pinch gesture to switch between pillarboxing and cropping the video to fit your screen, but now you can keep zooming in to get a better look at something.
For those using dark mode, the YouTube player on mobile and desktop now includes Ambient Mode, which allows the colors of the video to spill out of the player, creating a soft glow effect. It’s not quite Ambilight, but it softens the transition between video and black background.
In terms of dark mode, it is now even darker on mobile, desktop, and television. The Playlist interface has also been updated, with a splash of ambient color magic and additional information about the playlist itself.
Finally, there are some usability enhancements. YouTube links in video descriptions are now displayed as visible buttons, and the buttons for common actions (like, share, download, and subscribe) have been redesigned to reduce distraction and make them more accessible.
While these changes are now live, they will take some time to reach each user. They should be visible in the coming weeks.
