So nice to see a YouTube client that makes sense on the platform it’s on. Compare to the official YT client for iPad, for example, which bizarrely uses the same tiny Material touch targets as on phones.
I personally think iPad YouTube app's touch is not too bad; but in general (not limited to YouTube), I think the UI design of web video players are all too fixated on the existing design.
For example, when not in fullscreen mode, I don't see why all the controls need to be confined to the video frame and disappear when not hovering. While this design choice has its benefits, it also presents significant drawbacks: it obscures the actual content when you're interacting with the controls (a problem that's particularly acute on smaller screens), and performing quick, repetitive actions becomes difficult because the controls aren't visible until you hover over them, among other issues. This approach to web video player UI has been a pet peeve of mine for some time.
It's especially "interesting", when the slider allows to navigate to the exact frame you want (that happens very rarely) and the information you want to see is in the subtitles burned into the video - the ones not shifting with UI controls. The UI obscures that and I have to make tens of attempts with increased sloppiness due to frustration to take it all in.
Most often it's something I keep mishearing and need subtitles to actually understand what's being talked about. For example, I keep hearing "Hello awful person" in Anton Petrov's videos. https://youtu.be/PyRf7B1Ji4A?si=bIA7S8qB_WLdLgVs&t=45
Accept it and you will be less frustrated.
Most people don’t care enough about UX to make purchasing decisions based on it. Therefore, most companies don’t prioritize it. Therefore, most product designers have no incentive to care about UX.
This has always been true.
https://www.versionmuseum.com/images/websites/youtube-websit...
What's the right trade-off here in your mind then? Leave the controls always-on/visible? On a small screen, it takes a lot of real estate (except in portrait mode), and small UI controls are a pain to use so you need to make them big enough. I struggle with this, I really don't know what is the right trade-off here.
That's why the full-screen mode exists
One reason people might enter fullscreen mode is to avoid seeing distracting things on the screen. Controls might be distracting.
Portrait mode is exactly what I have in my mind. You have plenty of places on the bottom of the video canvas.
For YouTube at least, you only has full-screen mode when in landscape anyway.
This is besides your point but I thought I would mention it. I like controls that hide in full screen mode regardless of portrait or landscape because you want to focus on the content.
There was some way to get the same effect in android, but I can't recall right now
YouTube Premium offers Premium Controls which is a sidebox with the controls like you are asking for.
Once you want to do anything else you have to exit everything and open it back up though, it’s not really efficient
It's under "Modify Playback with Premium Controls":
Weird, that page says "Premium controls are available on Android, iPhone, and tablets, but are not yet available on desktop.", and I'm not seeing the option on desktop
Worst though is YouTube shorts where you can’t rewind
Edit: Also there are keyboard controls for going frame-by-frame, if you need that much control. Or there was last time I used it a long time ago.
It even forces its own built in screensavers to run instead of the OS one if the app is left paused. Who approves that?!
What Steve Jobs said about Microsoft in the 90s applies to Google today: They have no taste.
Eh? YouTube is my most-used app on Apple TV by a country mile and I’ve never seen this, I get the tvOS screensavers. Is it because I have YouTube Premium maybe?
I agree though, it is a garbage app. Everything on a TV, from the built-in apps to Roku boxes to Apple TV use basically the same app (certainly the same layout) and it’s really quite bad.
Their Apple TV app is basically a web view which doesn’t conform to any of AppleTV’s UI principles. Same as their YouTube TV app. It’s sad.
Only bug seems to be a black screen for a second when I close the app (maybe a bug with suspend?).
Install it, and delete the janky "native" app. Now Youtube is a webpage that does everything it does on a regular browser. PiP? Audio with the screen locked or in the background? Yes and yes.
But it's bizarre to me how bad the PiP experience on iOS is. When you press play on your bluetooth headset it will pause the video you're playing instead play whatever was on your Music app.
If you lock your screen, it will stop playing the youtube video and then you have press play again on the lock screen to resume.
Contrast that to either third party youtube clients on Android or (Re)vanced, and it's not even close.
And it seems every app has its own PiP issues. Every iOS I'm secretly hoping that Apple will address this issue, but it never happens ...
With that, YouTube single-handedly forced me to move browsers on all my devices – from Safari to Orion, where I get to use uBlock Origin. uBlock seems to have stayed a step ahead of YT since.
I'm really not arguing for any particular course of action but these options have real and potential time costs that need to be weighed against financial and mental load.
It does. The experience is worse than it was a couple of months ago, though, as both YouTube and the blockers have to get creative. I think it’s engaged in the general cat-and-mouse game and occasionally I see YouTube’s anti-ad blocker screen, but usually it resolves after a day or two. Overall it’s still much better than out-of-the-box YouTube.
I get it for small time apps, but Meta is clearly big enough to give it the little amount of attention it needs.