YouTube is testing a pretty significant visual redesign for its Now Playing video page

It looks like YouTube is testing a new design for the page of the video you’re watching that could do away with the right-hand sidebar. The experiment is only available to a handful of people, and it’s probably one of the most significant changes we’ve seen to the platform in quite some time.

Typically, this sidebar contains recommended content, while the space below the video you’re watching houses its description and comments. However, this new design – noticed by Twitter user @XenoPanther and reported by 9to5Google – places all of these elements in the sidebar, along with the interactive buttons such as “like,” “dislike,” and “subscribe.”

However, the thing that’s probably the strangest thing to lay your eyes on in the tweet above is the new full-width home page-style content wall below the video player, filled with recommendations, content from your subscriptions, and even community text posts.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that the video details to the right of the video will be pushed back under it if you place the player in theater mode since that would take up the full width of your display (this is different than fullscreen!).

Obviously, this would mean that all of the homepage content found below would be pushed even further down under that circumstance. It’s worth noting that this is exactly how YouTube works on mobile devices. it could be that Google is trying to close the gap between the two designs.

Personally, I think it’s an interesting change that could re-arrange the most vital information and interactive elements into places where they’re less cumbersome to reach, and I’m curious to see how it will be received by you all in the comments. Do you hate this potential redesign, or could you see yourself getting on board if it becomes a permanent change to the site?