YouTube says there's a reason its UI keeps changing, and it's not to annoy you

YouTube’s endless experimentation with its user interface, both on mobile and the web, can feel jarring. It’s almost as if the UI is constantly changing, and at any given time you’ll find different content orientations, experimental placements, and buttons spread across the interface. The next day you’d find these changes reversed, or new ones being tested.

In the last year alone, we’ve seen more than half a dozen major changes. But YouTube recently explained the philosophy behind the move, confirming these changes are intentional. In a recent blog post attributed to Jonathan Terleski, YouTube’s VP of User Experience, the video giant reveals the drive behind these unceasing changes. The blog recounts five such incidents when YouTube’s interface has gone through minimal changes to “reduce clutter and make the app feel effortless to use.” The idea is to make “every pixel count.”

Terleski wrote that YouTube doesn’t want the interface to hog space that could otherwise be available to content. And so, it has changed visual elements that may obstruct visibility of the content. Among those changes are shifting the product overlay on long-form videos to a pane below the video rather than on it, and introducing new, more see-through icons on Shorts.

Similarly, YouTube claims the recent redesign of the action buttons under long-form videos — in which YouTube removed the text labels on the buttons — was intended to ensure the buttons look consistent across the interface. That implies consistency in buttons across Shorts and long-form videos on mobile apps and the web. But it doesn’t stop at those places; YouTube says a similar design philosophy also extends to larger screens, such as smart TVs.

Of course, we can’t ignore that this is corporate-speak to justify changes, and not all changes land well with those who use YouTube multiple times a day, every day.