How to Use Ambient Mode on YouTube (and What It Does)

If you spend hours watching YouTube content, the platform has a feature to help augment your viewing experience on both mobile and desktop: Ambient mode.

YouTube Ambient mode allows you to immerse yourself in the video-watching experience while reducing eye fatigue, and this is how you can start using it now.

What Is YouTube Ambient Mode?

Ambient mode adds gradient colors to your screen's background while watching YouTube videos. The feature takes colors from the YouTube video you're watching and adds them with a soft gradient texture—it appears as if the video's colors are leaking into the surrounding parts of the video player.

YouTube's Ambient mode is dynamic and instantly updates the background color every time the colors change in the video making your viewing experience more immersive. Due to the nature of the feature, it only works in dark mode.

That said, start by enabling dark mode on YouTube before jumping into the next section, where we cover the steps on how to use Ambient mode. We also recommend updating your YouTube app on mobile to be sure you're running the latest version, just in case you don't see the option.

How to Use Ambient Mode on YouTube (Android and iOS)

Enabling dark mode on YouTube will automatically enable Ambient mode. However, you can switch off the feature. Here's how:

1. Tap on any YouTube video to start playing.
2. Tap the screen to reveal control options.
3. Tap the Settings icon in the top right. This will reveal a pop-up menu.
4. In the pop-up menu, tap Additional settings.
5. Finally, tap Ambient mode to disable the feature. You will see an Ambient mode is off pop-up message confirming the feature has been disabled.

If you want to re-enable Ambient mode, follow the same steps. One limitation you should note about Ambient mode is it doesn't work for offline videos unless you have an active internet connection. If you download a YouTube video and play it, you won't even see the Ambient mode option in the settings pop-up menu.

How to Use Ambient Mode on YouTube (Desktop)

On YouTube's desktop site, you can also use Ambient mode. Similar to mobile, you must first turn on dark mode, which will also enable Ambient mode by default.

With that said, here's how to disable Ambient mode on YouTube's desktop site:

1. Play a YouTube video of your choice and move your cursor to the video player to reveal control options.
2. Select the Settings icon in the bottom right of the video.
3. In the pop-up menu, click on Ambient mode to disable the feature. Surrounding areas of your video player will immediately lose the gradient background. From there on, Ambient mode will be disabled on all YouTube videos.

YouTube desktop's Theater mode feature also includes Ambient mode support. Therefore, you don't have to use the Default view for the effects to appear.

Ambient mode allows you to improve your YouTube viewing experience. Another tip is to increase the video quality by selecting Settings > Quality > Higher picture quality (mobile) or, if you're on YouTube's desktop site, select a higher specific resolution like 1080p, 1440p, or 2160p.

Alternatively, there's a way to permanently set YouTube video quality. However, if you're using a limited data plan, this can quickly become a costly adventure, so streaming at a lower resolution would be better.

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