YouTube Web Player Now Supports Vertical Videos
Ron Perillo / 6 years ago
No More Black Bars
Although YouTube finally began supporting vertical videos on their mobile apps, their web player on the PC did not. That is until now after the latest update from the video streaming platform. With the new changes, the YouTube will now enlarge the display appropriately and skip the black bars on the side if it is a vertical video.
If you are on the default skin, the extra space will be white, and if dark mode is enabled, it follows the same dark gray background colour. This makes video viewing a lot less jarring to watch, and maintains the resolution intended. Although, the controls remain the same width as a widescreen video on the desktop player.
How About Other Aspect Ratios?
Black bars are of course, also present in 4:3 and 16:9 videos. In the case of 4:3, the player actually adapts and enlarges to fit the entirety of the width. The same goes with 16:9 videos, dropping the black bars on the top and bottom edges.
Although it is understandable that it does not work on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 11, for some reason even the Edge web browser still shows black bars. However, it seems to work perfectly fine on Opera’s (version 54) web browser.
