Everyone will have their own preferences when it comes to watching videos on YouTube, whether that’s the playback speed (up to 2x) or the video size (from full screen to mini player). One of the available viewing options that you might not know about, because it’s rather well hidden, is ambient mode.
You can get to it through the YouTube interface on the web, as well as the mobile apps, and YouTube itself describes it as an “immersive” way of watching videos. It’s actually an extension of dark mode and it uses the colors in the video you’re currently watching to create a subtle wash around the edges of the video viewer.
At the very least, it’s worth trying—you might find you prefer it to the regular YouTube viewing experience. Here’s how to enable or disable the feature on the web or mobile—you won’t currently find it on devices like smart TVs or streaming dongles.
On the web
If you’re using YouTube on the web, you need to be using dark mode for ambient mode to work—that’s when the area around videos and thumbnails is black and the text is in white. To enable dark mode, click your Google account profile picture (top right), then choose Appearance and Dark theme.
Ambient mode is actually automatically enabled when you’re in dark mode, so you should start to see a wash of color around the sides of your videos as they play, based on the colors of the current video. Bear in mind that the effect can take a few seconds to appear, and it is quite subtle.
It’s also only visible in the default video view on YouTube on the web: You’re not going to see it if your videos are running in full screen mode (as there will be no borders around the video window), or in cinema mode (where the video takes up the full width of the browser tab). You can switch between default and cinema views by clicking on the icons that appear in the…
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