YouTube Is Rolling Out Redesigned Description Pages For Videos On Android

YouTube, the video hosting giant, is popular among internet users for consuming video content, however, some content creators put a lot of extra information in the Description of videos. Now, the platform is testing a slight redesign that supports full-screen description pages for on Android device. The new Descriptions UI on Android will allow you to slide the description upward to fill the entire page instead of only providing descriptions with a small space available below the video.

The space below videos is increasingly busy with the platform recently moving the Comments section from the very bottom of the page to near the top of your screen. Above that space are buttons for like, dislike, sharing, downloading, and saving videos. A bar displaying the details of a channel, subscription status, and getting notifications is also available. You may miss the down-facing button in the top-right corner, which when tapped, displays the description of videos.

In the beta test, users can scroll and read as they watch a video, or drag the description to take up the full screen. When in full-screen mode, the YouTube for Android app will feature a channel icon and name, with a cross button (X) in the corner, which lets you quickly close the description.

The latest interface is still tucked behind the standard chevron-shaped down-facing button to get to the description. Although descriptions are not suddenly going to be easier to be spotted and accessed, they will easier to read, specifically where long descriptions of videos are concerned. Moreover, the latest update will bring the overall look more in line with other modern applications.

For some users, the change is already appearing with descriptions being made more prominent as well. The platform gave the descriptions box rounded corners. The latest description UI for YouTube’s Android app appears to be still in A/B testing which indicates that the new redesign is only showing up for a few end-users and mostly appears to be random. So, you should not expect the new description UI to appear on your end just yet, or any time soon.

Although it is a good move that gives prominence to the description on the smartphone and elevates it above the packed feed under YouTube videos, there is no guarantee that the company will follow through on the new change to push it across all of YouTube’s platform. Likely, it will come back to what sort of feedback it gets from users in response to the initial testing. If the feedback is mostly good, there is a good chance that the company will roll out the new change more widely in the near future. As with previous upgrades to the YouTube app, it will also likely arrive as a server-side update.



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