Youtube UI upgrade. Eye strain returns. ARGH!

wesfowler

So, anyone else experiencing eye strain from Youtube's latest "upgrade" to their UI video player interface?? I'm having to use my eye-patches again. Haven't had to do this in literally years. Very annoyed I must admit…

cooldudz

wesfowler Switch to using yt-dlp. I found screens that worked for me, but for some reason I would get my symptoms still while using youtube (albeit at much lesser intensity than if I were using bad screens). I consulted with chatgpt lol, and it told me that Youtube uses variable refresh rate where instead of using H.264, it will switch between formats even. I download all my videos now and have absolutely no problem viewing them. Also the ads on youtube are honestly ridiculous these days with how long they and how many of them there are. It's also nice building up a little data hoarding library lol

Firemaker

Are you talking about the website or some of the mobile apps?

Isn't the update mostly UI - icons, animations, and a few small tweaks? Is there any info about changes to video formats or anything else that could trigger symptoms?

ensete

Firemaker YouTube changes their codecs and video display all the time. They release no technical details about it. I have had YouTube go bad DURING A VIDEO.

The change is in the video player itself, not the source video, so the only real fix is to use a different player.

ensete

I have. It happens all the time. YouTube updates, it goes bad, they update again, it gets useable again. It's annoying.

I am able to use NewPipe on my phone symptom free. Fro desktop viewing I programmed my own YouTube player that uses PotPlayer as a video player which I can configure to be symptom free.

The "good" news is YouTube usually switches back to being "good" after a while and they update something else. But ultimately Google does not care about UX at all and they will continue to keep screwing with things for no reason.