YouTube may be adding in a revamped comment UI to the app on Android in the near future, as the design looks to be getting some mild testing with various users. Google has made plenty of changes to the YouTube application on Android over the last year or so, updating its entire UI to have a completely new design style and all the while adding more material design elements. One thing that hasn’t changed a whole lot is the comments section, but with a handful of users seemingly testing out changes to its look and interaction capabilities, these changes could be coming in a rather close update that may not be too far off.
While the comments section on videos doesn’t look vastly different from the way it looks now, there are some additions that will likely make interacting and managing the comments a little bit different or enhanced. As it currently stands the comments list on videos in the YouTube app only shows the comment and a date it was posted, with a button that users can tap to reveal more comments. The new comments section UI that is being tested out shows features that are more akin to the comments section UI on the YouTube website.
There are like and dislike buttons that users can interact with below each and every comment and it displays how many likes or dislikes that comment has had since it was posted. There is also an icon that displays how many replies the comment has received so users will know which ones have been interacted with the most. While this is certainly informative, it may also serve as a way for users to see the best place to jump into a conversation. Comments with more replies and more likes or dislikes might be a good place to drop a comment of their own, and while this has always been possible to do simply by expanding comments to make those replies show up, the new icons that display these values will make it easier for users to see things at a little bit more of a glance. Lastly, there is also an option to sort what comments can be viewed first, with an option to switch between the newest comments or the top comments, depending on user preference. There is currently no mention or when this feature might roll out to all YouTube users.
