Fixing The New YouTube Look And Feel

If you’ve been using a tracking cookie randomizer or if you’re unlucky enough to be on the wrong side of Google’s A/B testing, you may have run into YouTube’s new look and feel.

Unfortunately, while it does have a few small improvements, it has some really big problems:

1. The all-white background is rather eye-searing
2. Buttons which only look like buttons and links which only look like links when you hover near them make it slower and more confusing when you want to click Like/Dislike or Show More/Less.
3. Having things change their appearance as you move your mouse over seemingly empty regions of the page is rather distracting.

As such, I’ve written a little Stylish userstyle named “YouTube – Fix new look with elements from old look” which patches away these flaws by borrowing colors and patterns from the old YouTube theme and locking buttons and links in their on-hover appearance.

I still haven’t decided out how best to make the button for adding to lists (eg. favorites) as easy to find as it was in the old layout, but I’ll keep thinking about it.

Let me know if there’s anything you think could still be improved further.

Fixing The New YouTube Look And Feel by Stephan Sokolow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.