YouTube's desktop website gets a makeover with new design, dark theme and more

YouTube is celebrating its 12th birthday with a re-designed website and a slew of brand new features including a new dark mode, tweaks to search and channel pages, and an updated theater mode that allows you to watch videos in a larger setting without having to go full screen.

The most notable aspect about YouTube’s redesign is the fact that the site has been rebuilt on top of Polymer, an open source JavaScript library that allows developers to create web components that can be re-used.

"Things that get built once can then be reapplied more quickly. It’s less about a particular feature, and it’s more about the velocity of which things can be brought to market. This then enables us to explore and then do more things," said Manuel Bronstein, VP of Product Management at YouTube.

The company is also letting you get a sneak peek at what you can expect from the revamp by heading over to youtube.com/new. As the company states, YouTube will be getting a revamp under Google's Material Design philosophy, which will essentially focus on simplicity, consistency and beauty.

When you visit the test version of the site, you will see that the left-side navigational elements can now be made to disappear with single click on the hamburger menu. Additionally, the language and location options that were previously found right at the bottom have now moved over to the navigation bar on the left. This is probably because YouTube doesn't want the scrolling to end as it is testing out bottomless scrolling feature.

There are three main sections at the top: Home, Trending, and Subscriptions, followed by Your Library and a list of your individual subscriptions.

Alongside the refreshed design, Youtube now also gets a Dark theme, which replaces all-white UI when the dark mode is turned on. It  will be a simple switch users can toggle on or off from the site itself.

Google says that the company is still working on improvements, so you may see some more changes when it officially becomes available.