YouTube continues to undergo changes with each new version of the application, the most recent being the inclusion of ad-free playback of videos for a monthly fee. While YouTube has gotten better and better over the years since Google had purchased the company, one thing it has always lacked is a set of proper controls to manage the fast forward and rewind capabilities for videos. In the latest version of YouTube for Android it appears that Google is going to be adding these controls in, although it’s worth noting that this version of the app doesn’t have the controls enabled just yet so Google will likely have to turn things on from their end.
With YouTube version 10.43, fast forward and rewind options are obviously the biggest change of note that users will eventually have access to, seeing as how it should make it much easier to move forward and backward within videos than before. rewinding and fast forwarding has always technically been a capability, but you had to use the slider bar to get the video to where you wanted it which didn’t always result in precision. Now with proper control buttons for this function, if you miss anything important in a video you can more accurately get right to the spot that you missed instead of having to simply drag the slider to some point before that specific moment just to see it.
Also new in this latest version of YouTube it seems there have been some revisions to the visual appearance of some icons, specifically the button for transitioning a video into fullscreen view and the button layout for adding to your favorites and watch later lists. Google is no stranger to changing up the look of simple things like icons within apps, and YouTube is no exception to the rule. The new fullscreen button now resembles the icon used on the YouTube website, while the “add to” button has been changed from the “+” symbol to a “+” with a stack next to it. Users will also notice that the pages for playlists and the list of watch later videos are no longer a monochrome gray, black, and white color scheme, but instead have taken on the traditional red and white YouTube color scheme. These are of course relatively minor visual tweaks, but they are changes nonetheless and worth mentioning. You can wait for the latest version of YouTube to hit the Play Store updates list, or you can grab the apk from here and install it if you wish to do so.