A few months ago YouTube began testing out a new transparent video player and personally I was always such a huge fan of it that I’ve been using it on a daily basis since April 2015 while it was in it’s beta stages. Today I am happy to say that YouTube has officially launched the new transparent video player – making it a default for most of it’s users.
As previously discussed the new player offers a transparent interface with auto-hiding controls – intending to provide more focus on the video at hand. That being said there are some users reporting issues – however I urge you to make sure you have cleared your browser’s cache before submitting your issue here.
Subsequently there have been several commonly asked questions going around, which have been addressed below:
- The Watch Later functionality on YouTube video pages is available below the player (in the “Add To” playlist section). You should be able to add to your watch later playlist via that option; if you are in full screen, Watch Later is in the upper right corner of the screen.
- There should be no negative performance impact to video playing or buffering by this update. If you are having issues with buffering more, the problem is likely not tied to this update. To report issues with video buffering, right click on the player, click “Get Debug Info”, and share the results. However, the new player will prevent some buffering, due to the improved display; so if you’re seeing less buffering, you can thank the new player.
- There is not a way to opt out of this new player; we have deployed this change across the site as of today, and it should be affecting users using the HTML5 player across the site.