It's subtle, but it's there: Google tests design change for the Android YouTube app

Google, never one to keep the status quo when a change can be made to an app, is once again making a small and subtle change to the Android version of the YouTube app. If you get the feeling that one day someone wakes up and says, let's make a change to the bottom bar of YouTube, you might be right. And the changes are so small that you probably would never notice that they were there.

First, let's discuss the changes being made to some of the icons. The "Home" icon, the first one on the bottom bar, is getting a small change with the roof on the house now slightly wider than the sides of the wall. The "Plus" button in the middle of the bottom bar will no longer feature a white circular design and the "Subscriptions" icon no longer gives the illusion of multiple YouTube video screens. That is accomplished by reducing the number of horizontal lines on top of the icon from two to one.

And the biggest change is the one that will be made to the bottom bar itself. Currently, the bar is translucent so if you're using Light mode, it will be white and if you're in Dark mode, it will be in black. With the change, the panel will be blurry with splotches of white interrupting the solid black. We can't show you what this blurry design will look like in Light mode because it appears that very few Android users are involved in this test so far.

Also noteworthy, the new design showed up on a phone that was using the old three-button navigation system which made the bar look much bigger compared to the gesture navigation version used to show the current state of the bottom bar. To reiterate, the blurred bottom bar appears to be the subject of a very limited test at the moment.

Some YouTube subscribers are also going to be guinea pigs for another test that will show recommendations for long-form videos in their YouTube Shorts feed. The goal is to give YouTube content providers another place where their work can be discovered.