YouTube for Android testing a video progress Bar
YouTube rolled out a big redesign across its mobile apps and the web.
YouTube for Android is now testing a more subtle video progress bar that isn’t red all the time.
In those circumstances, YouTube also doesn’t note how much of a video has loaded.
Interacting with the scrubber or tapping to bring up controls changes it back to the previous behavior
This helps the UI fade away, which is something that YouTube has been working toward as seen with Ambient mode.
Outside of the video player, red is still used in the main feed and everywhere else
So the change is clearly targeted at the watching experience.
As YouTube’s accent color, red is definitely not going away.
Meanwhile, the usual red progress bar remains when using a light theme on the same device. It’s not clear if that’s the intended behavior
This change is not widely rolled out, and only live on that one phone even across multiple device sign-ins.