Undoubtedly, YouTube has grown to be the preferred source of entertainment for most people over the years.
The platform has added a couple of user-friendly features to enhance your viewing experience and to make the entire process immersive.
One of the latest additions to the platforms is YouTube Ambient Mode.
What Is YouTube Ambient Mode?
YouTube Ambient Mode is a new feature that allows you to view videos in an immersive way.by allowing the borders to leak a subtle color gradient based on the content you are watching.
YouTube’s Ambient mode is dynamic, meaning it automatically updates the background color every time the colors change in the video making your viewing experience more immersive. Due to the nature of the feature, it only works in dark mode.
This feature is available across iOS, Desktop, and Android and this is how you enable it:
How To Use Ambient Mode On Your YouTube Mobile App
As earlier indicated, the feature is only available if you have dark mode turned on. To have turn on dark mode, tap your profile image in the top right corner > Go to Settings > Appearance > Select Dark Theme.
Enabling dark mode on YouTube will automatically enable Ambient mode. We also recommend updating your YouTube app on mobile to be sure you’re running the latest version, just in case you don’t see the option.
To turn of the feature:
- Tap on any YouTube video to start playing.
- Tap the screen to reveal control options.
- Tap the Settings icon in the top right. This will reveal a pop-up menu.
- In the pop-up menu, tap Ambient mode to disable the feature.
- You will see an Ambient mode is off pop-up message confirming the feature has been disabled.
Note: Ambient mode does not work for offline videos.
How To Use The Feature On Your Desktop YouTube App
Just like the mobile version of the application, Ambient Mode is turned on by default in the desktop app if you have dark mode on.
That said, here is how to disable the feature on your desktop app.
- Play a YouTube video of your choice and move your cursor to the video player to reveal control options.
- Select the Settings icon in the bottom right of the video.
- In the pop-up menu, Click Ambient mode
to disable the feature. - Surrounding areas of your video player will immediately lose the gradient background.
- From there on, Ambient mode will be disabled on all YouTube videos.
As of writing this article, Theatre mode in the desktop app doesn’t have Ambient mode support. Therefore, you must use the Default view for the feature to work.
You’ll know you’re using Theatre mode if the video player spans the entire screen horizontally.
You can switch back to the Default view by moving the cursor over a playing video and clicking the white rectangle box icon in the bottom right.
You should now see the video player area reduced and a list of recommended videos on the right-hand side. If Ambient mode is enabled, the gradient colors will be displayed.
