New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on December 21, 2022) follows:

Owned by Google, YouTube is one of the most popular video-sharing and social media platforms.

It is the second most visited website after Google Search with about a billion monthly users that watch over a billion hours of content on a daily basis.

However, like any other popular social media platform, the changes YouTube makes do face criticism from users every now and then.

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And now, the platform is once again facing backlash for certain changes made to its user interface on both iOS and Android.

YouTube white and gray progress bar draws criticism

According to reports (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10), several users are concerned about the newly introduced white and gray progress bar.

The new progress bar makes it difficult for users to notice and examine it and makes the viewing experience a little frustrating.

Reportedly, the progress bar only turns red when clicking the player or while playing content in PiP (Picture-in-Picture) mode. Some assumed it was a problem on their end but felt upset to know that it was an intentional change.

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@YouTube why would you change the progress bar to white color? it’s literally so hard to see it, red was perfectly fine and you had to change it for no reason.
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I don’t understand why websites remove color from things that don’t need it. The progress bar on the YouTube mobile app changed from red to white.
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The main problem that users are facing is that they cannot differentiate the loading indicator from the video’s progress bar, as both appear very similar to one another.

Do note that YouTube had earlier faced backlash for the removal of ‘Dislikes’ and the ‘Sort by oldest’ option as well.

Several viewers are unhappy since the issue seems to spoil their playback experience and are demanding that YouTube should bring back the red progress bar.

We are hopeful that the company will listen to the viewers’ feedback and consider changing back the white and gray progress bar to the original red one.

No potential workaround

Unfortunately, YouTube is yet to release a statement on the issue where users are dissatisfied with the changes made to the progress bar.

It appears that there is no workaround that could currently help iOS users to revert back to the old user interface featuring the red progress bar.

However, Android users can try switching to an older version of the YouTube app as a potential workaround.

That being said, we will keep an eye on the issue where YouTube users are unhappy with the white and gray progress bar and update this story as new information becomes available.

Update 1 (January 02, 2023)

12:21 pm (IST): The white progress bar is now rolling out for more Android devices and accounts, including the incognito mode. However, it’s currently limited to dark theme and aims to offer a less distracting UI.

Note: We have a dedicated issues/bugs and pending improvements tracker for YouTube , so make sure to follow that as well.

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.

Kanav Sood
740 Posts

I love technology and like to talk about the latest news in the Tech industry.

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