Hot on the heels of YouTube’s launch of its very own live-TV streaming service, YouTube TV, the king of the video streaming world has unveiled a new design for its website.
YouTube will now be much more minimalistic visually, as it puts even more of the focus on the videos by streamlining the site’s look using a web design style developed by Google known as Material Design. The new design will be consistent across all Google platforms, so YouTube will look the same regardless of whether you’re watching on desktop, a smartphone, tablet, or TV app.
The revamped design will be accompanied by a handful of new features. As the name implies, Dark Theme will apply a dark background to the website and be present throughout your browsing and video-watching experience. According to YouTube, the goal of Dark Theme is to “cut down on glare and let you take in the true colors of the videos you watch.”
Dark Theme is the first of many features being built on a new, faster framework called Polymer, which will enable hastened feature implementation in the future and, hopefully, an even better viewing experience for the site’s ever-expanding video catalog.
If you’re curious about the new design and want to check it out for yourself, just opt in to test out a preview of the new site. Should you give the new site a whirl and decide you’d rather stick with the current look for now, clicking on “Restore classic YouTube” in your YouTube Account menu will do the trick. As this is an early preview of the site’s new design, YouTube is asking for users to provide their feedback about what they like and don’t like, which can also be done through the Account menu.
You can check out the new design by going to https://www.youtube.com/new.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
Technology evolves every day, transforming how we live and work. Our devices are becoming more than tools we use. They are increasingly capable companions that help streamline day-to-day routines and spark creative ideas. If you have been waiting for the right moment to upgrade your tech setup, the Discover Samsung Shopping Event offers an opportunity to explore what connected, AI-powered living can look like.