YouTube is revamping its TV app to make videos feel way more interactive

YouTube is constantly tinkering with its app design across different platforms and screen sizes, and today, the company shared the latest changes coming to its TV-optimized app. There’s a clear focus on making the viewing experience more interactive and giving greater prominence to chapters, comments, and video descriptions — without getting in the way of the video you’re trying to watch.

The new view shrinks the video down slightly to make space for the description, comments, and other elements around it. It’s not YouTube’s new default look, since many people will still prefer a full-screen layout. But you can easily click into the more interactive interface from the standard video player screen.

“What users will be able to see on their TVs is a design solution that keeps the video front and center, but layers in the ability to access the features that make YouTube unique — all without interrupting the viewing experience,” YouTube’s Joe Hines and Aishwarya Agarwal wrote in a blog post.

The design changes started “with the idea of reducing the size of the video player and simplifying the interactions.” YouTube’s design team came up with several prototypes that varied in complexity and then had users provide feedback on which approach worked best. That’s how it landed on this new TV experience.

By shifting interactive features to the right side, YouTube is also making a renewed effort to bring shopping to the TV screen. You’ll see a “products in this video” section appear whenever creators include what’s being featured in their content. But YouTube hasn’t quite reached the stage of letting you complete an entire transaction from your TV; instead, the app will display a QR code that you can scan to finish buying an item on your phone. Not exactly seamless.

YouTube says this redesign will also make its way to YouTube TV, which will allow subscribers of that service to keep track of scores without obstructing whatever game is on. As is often the case with these things, YouTube will roll out the TV app updates to users “over the next few weeks” rather than provide it to everyone at once.