YouTube Testing New Mobile Layout, Try it Out Now

It seems like giving your website a makeover is the thing to do these days. Hot on the heels of the Facebook changes we saw rollout last week, reports are coming in today that YouTube has some major plans to overhaul its site’s appearance as well.

While you’ve likely already seen the new design on YouTube’s webpage, the changes are now making their way into the mobile app. The new interface is a lot different than the previous design, and although it’s still being tested, you can try it out today…
MacStories‘ Federico Viticci made the discovery this morning, by opening the YouTube website from his iPhone. Like the aforementioned Cosmic Panda project, the user must opt-in to enable the new layout.
You can do this by opening up mobile Safari and typing in m.youtube.com/new_visual_design. Once the page is loaded, you get a message that confirms you’re in the right place:

“Welcome to a new experience for watching videos on mobile. Thanks for giving it a try. You can always go back to the old version at any time through the Settings page. Bookmark this page so you can easily return here or just navigate to m.youtube.com/new_visual_design.”

If you liked YouTube’s desktop-site refresh, you’ll love the new mobile app. It has the same dark color scheme, and it puts all of the important features front and center for your convenience. Page and video load times also seem to be a step faster as well.

All of the standard options are present, including the ability to quickly share a video through Facebook, Twitter, and for some reason Google Buzz. You’d think that given the relationship between YouTube and the search giant, they’d have support for Google+.

Although the new look is still in the experimental-testing stage, it seems to be pretty solid. If you’d like to try it out, just visit the website, mentioned above, on your iPhone or iPod touch. Also, make sure to visit iDB’s YouTube page while you’re at it.

What do you think of the new YouTube design?