The Material You “broke” YouTube

YouTube for Android recently received an update (17.27.35 for me, but I can’t rule out other variants – Ed) that introduced new elements of Material You, the design language launched by Google last year, and which is still spreading in its apps and services. Too bad that Material You broke one of YouTube’s key functions: the ability to unsubscribe from a channel.

Galeotto was the Material You

Let’s take a step back. In the last few days, the Android Play Store has also been updated, which has received new ones rounded buttons, visible for example on the installation page of each application. A similar thing has now happened to YouTube, which has rounded up the channel subscribe button; it just rounded it too much! To understand better, look at the two screenshots below: on the left you will find the old graphics, on the right the new one.

As you can see, Google has changed the cards a bit, moving the subscription button and the notification bell further down, and enclosing them within a single button: and that was the mistake.

Or maybe just an excess of zeal …

If you are familiar with how YouTube mobile works, you will already know that “subscriber” and the bell were in effect two distinct elements: by pressing on the first you canceled your subscription to the channel, by pressing on the second you could customize the reception of notifications.

Now, with the Material You, the two have become one, and the only effect you will get by pressing on “subscribed”, on the bell, or even in their vicinity, is to bring up the management options for channel notifications . In simple terms, there is no longer any way to unsubscribe from a YouTube channelwith this new graphics, as the screenshots below show (the first two are from the previous version, for comparison).

It must be said that, with the old graphics, the two elements were not too distinct from each other: they simply sat on the same line, side by side. In short, it almost seems that a overzealous designer has seen fit to enhance them by enclosing them together, but without realizing that the two performed very different functions. We therefore hope that a separation into two buttons, which highlights their different nature, is just a matter of a next update.

Moral of the story: run and subscribe to our YouTube channel, so you won’t be able to leave! (At least until Google decides to release both a graphic and functional fix, which we will notify you of when things are done.)