YouTube Officially Rolls Out New, Centered Design

In January, we first got word of YouTube‘s plan to tweak its site design by centering videos and playlists. Those changes are now official, with a YouTube blog post announcing all of the site’s new features.

The most noticeable change is easily visible on any YouTube video. On-screen objects are now centered, which evens out the gray space on larger monitors. In addition, the sidebar–an essential part of the much-criticized layout YouTube introduced last March–is no longer present while watching videos.

While it no longer intrudes upon our video viewing experience, the sidebar does gain a new function in YouTube’s tweaked layout. Users are now encouraged to save playlists

, which can be easily accessed from the sidebar alongside channel subscriptions.

All of these changes seem very minor, and the centered videos look much nicer, so YouTube users will likely not be up in arms this time around. Perhaps you feel differently, though. If you have an opinion about the updated YouTube design, let us know in the comments.