Enhance your YouTube viewing experience with the newly introduced ambient mode that brings vibrant on-screen colors to the previously black edges of your screen. However, if you find it a little distracting, this guide will show you how to easily turn off YouTube’s ambient colors.
While smartphones have been getting bigger, video aspect ratios have not been keeping up. This results in black bars on the edges of your screen when watching 21:9 YouTube videos in landscape mode. YouTube has attempted to address this issue in the past with features like zoom, but that results in the top and bottom of the video being cut off. Some argue that black bars are better than a cropped video.
YouTube’s solution to the black bar problem is to introduce colors from the video to reduce the contrast of the dark edges. However, we have found that it can be more distracting than the black bars themselves.
How to Disable Ambient Mode
If you prefer to turn off ambient mode, YouTube has included an option to easily do so. It can be accessed directly from the video player and only takes a few seconds to disable.
- In the YouTube video player, click the settings cog.
- Click Additional settings.
- Toggle the Ambient mode switch to the off position.
Once you’ve disabled ambient mode, the colored edges in the fullscreen viewing experience will revert back to black on YouTube. You can easily switch this feature on and off to determine your preference. While some may quickly adjust to the new color edges, others find the black bars less intrusive and eventually fade away as they watch more videos.
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