YouTube has started testing a new player design on smartphones. Some users received the new look a few months ago and were not too happy with it, Android Authority writes.
The new design is denser and mixes more controls on the screen, and the old controls have been moved to new locations. For example, the title of the video is now displayed at the bottom, and at the same time, you can see the number of views and when the video was uploaded right in the player.
We also moved the channel name down and added an icon and the number of subscribers. The screen expansion and return buttons have been moved to the top left corner, where the name used to be displayed. One of the main changes is that with the new design, there are no back/forward buttons in the horizontal view, but they are present in the vertical view.
Another change is that when you watch videos from a playlist, you can "swipe" them as Shorts.
Users on Reddit, where similar changes appeared even earlier, complain that this is unnecessary and that it is not worth fixing something that already works well. The comments also note that the new design is essentially a YouTube player for smart TVs. In general, the changes are mostly "hated".