One of the biggest changes is the all-new true black homepage. YouTube already had a dark mode, but the color palette was more on the greyish side, than true/AMOLED black. It was about time YouTube moved to a true black homepage given the prevalence of OLED panels on smart TVs and even on monitors these days. Another notable change would be the rounded corners on the video thumbnails, and that also carries over to the search box above. The category tags just above the thumbnails also gets the same treatment, now featuring rounded edges.
Aligning With Material You
Google first introduced ‘Material You‘ in 2021, and it was mostly a solution to the company’s big problem then, design inconsistency. As we all know, Google runs a lot of services, like for example, Maps, Search, and Wallet. The company alone has published over 130 apps on the PlayStore, with each app having its own design language. Material You was introduced to address this problem, by providing a design principle that brings familiarity, and yet gives a lot of room for personalization. The recent YouTube homepage update is in the same vein. And not just YouTube as over the last few months, Google has updated several apps with Material You redesigns, the most notable examples being Gmail, PlayStore and the Phone app. – Google at I/O 2021 According to 9to5Google, the new homepage is enabled for select people only, as the company still seems to be testing it. Google will likely roll it out officially in the coming weeks.
