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Comment by thrdbndndn | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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Another one with a same pet peeve here.

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

It used to be like that.

https://www.versionmuseum.com/images/websites/youtube-websit...

And extra controls appear when pausing. I get that most of the time when you pause it’s because you are not watching, but it completely obscures the use case where you want to look at a still frame.

Worst though is YouTube shorts where you can’t rewind

Oh wow, is this because I have YouTube premium? I absolutely loathe this feature, because 99% of the time I am pausing, it is because I want to read what text is on the screen. It gets completely obscured by the controls, and even the text that is visible is difficult to read because it has a darkened background. Is there a way to turn this feature off?

I also have YT premium. On desktop, I use firefox and the popout video feature. It is easily resizable and movable. Downside is that js-player controls still show on the webpage, not the popout. On ios, once paused, just tap anywhere on the video anywhere there isn't a widget. That hides all the video controls for me.

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.

> 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

YouTube Premium offers Premium Controls which is a sidebox with the controls like you are asking for.

Oh my gosh they’re paywalling video controls now wow.

what what what? I've been using Premium for years what is this feature exactly? I don't see it. Cheers.

If you tap on the settings/cog icon on a video, there’s an item for “additional settled”, which then has another item for playback controls or something.

Once you want to do anything else you have to exit everything and open it back up though, it’s not really efficient

You rock! Thanks.

Desktop only feature. Have to enable it. It puts a sidebox with a mini remote where suggested videos usually are.

It's under "Modify Playback with Premium Controls":

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6308116?hl=en

> Desktop only feature

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

Whoops, I don't actually use them so I may have flipped it in my mind.

> it obscures the actual content when you're interacting with the controls (a problem that's particularly acute on smaller screens)

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.

> On a small screen, it takes a lot of real estate

That's why the full-screen mode exists

thrdbndndn was only advocating for always-on controls in non-fullscreen mode.

One reason people might enter fullscreen mode is to avoid seeing distracting things on the screen. Controls might be distracting.

in full screen mode, even after people turn their phone 90 degrees, you have not much space for visible control on a 16x9 video.

> except in portrait mode

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.

On iPhone the YouTube app will do full-screen in portrait mode. Grab the video title (under the video) with your finger and pull down. The rest of the UI goes away and you just get the video shown in the middle of the screen with large black areas above and below the screen.

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.

Not anymore, you can force portrait fullscreen In desktop for example: If you go into a vertical video with a regular "/watch?v=" URL, you can see vertical format video with regular controls

There was some way to get the same effect in android, but I can't recall right now

You just need to accept that "user interface design" has stopped being a thing in everything but niche/pro applications for at least the past 10 years. You have "follow the trend", yes, or "design it so it looks good on screenshots", but not "user interface design".

Accept it and you will be less frustrated.

Acceptance can be wise, but this is not a 10 year old problem. Look at your oven; unless you are very lucky (or picky, if you bought it yourself), it has terrible UX.

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.

In other words, the designers are just engaging in screenshot-centric design.

It would be helpful if you you can hide the UI when pausing for screenshot, then!

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