Google appears to be borrowing a page from Apple’s design playbook, with a new YouTube experiment that brings a translucent, floating navigation bar to Android that looks similar to iOS 27’s Liquid Glass interface.
The change was spotted by a Reddit user who shared a screenshot showing YouTube’s familiar bottom navigation bar with a noticeably different appearance.
Rather than sitting directly against the bottom edge of the screen, the redesigned bar appears to float across the interface, with a semi-transparent background that allows some of the content below to show. It’s a relatively small visual change, but one that makes YouTube look more like an iPhone app than something built around Google’s own Material 3 Expressive design language.
As reported by Android Authority, the redesign follows Google’s recent decision to remove the subscriptions tab from the YouTube bottom navigation bar. While this change affects how users move around the app, this latest experiment is mainly cosmetic, replacing the conventional navigation layout with something that feels closer to Apple’s increasingly glass-heavy approach to interface design.
For now, the floating navigation bar appears to be part of a limited test rather than a wider Android rollout. The report says it couldn’t find the redesigned interface on several Android devices it tested, and we couldn’t find it on the best Android phones we tested.
The change also seems to be controlled by a server-side update, which means there is no setting Android users can turn on to get the new look. However, the third-party Morphe YouTube patcher has already introduced a similar glass-style navigation bar.
Unsurprisingly, the redesign has divided opinion. Some Reddit users are keen to see the floating interface on their devices, while others have questioned why Google seems to be taking inspiration from Apple when it already has its own distinctive Android design language. It’s a fair criticism, especially since the emphasis Google has placed on Material 3 Expressive and Android feels more visually consistent.
Google has not confirmed whether the floating navigation bar will become permanent or when it may reach more Android devices. However, the experiment suggests that the company is willing to look beyond its own design conventions when updating one of its most-used apps.