YouTube turned 12 this week and is marking the milestone with a redesign of its desktop site.

Video platform YouTube is opening up a preview of its new Material Design desktop site to a small group of people.

The new design, taking advantage of Google’s Material Design language, makes the site cleaner, simpler and more consistent with YouTube’s mobile app.

Brian Marquardt, product manager, explained that the site design is built on a faster framework named Polymer, which enables quicker feature development.

New dark theme arrives on YouTube

“We are introducing one of the first new features developed on Polymer: Dark Theme.

“Developed to cut down on glare and let you take in the true colours of the videos you watch, Dark Theme turns your background dark throughout your entire YouTube experience.

“This is only the beginning – you can look forward to more powerful new features coming soon,” Marquardt promised.

Users can opt in to preview the new design here.

If you want to return to the current design, select ‘Restore classic YouTube’ from the Account Menu.

YouTube on a Mac desktop. Image: Alexey Boldin/Shutterstock