YouTube On Android Annoys Users With Gray Bars; Fixed In Beta

In the past few months, we’ve reported on multiple bugs and issues that hampered YouTube users’ viewing experience. Remember the low-quality video playback bug on iOS that YouTube fixed a few days ago? Now, YouTube is annoying Android users by showing gray bars on the sides of videos when viewing videos full screen.

YouTube app on Android troubles users yet again, this time with gray bars

Typically, you see the black bars on both sides when the video’s aspect ratio mismatches with YouTube’s recommended 16:9. If you watch a video with a 1:1 or 4:3 aspect ratio on YouTube, you will see black bars. YouTube does this to fill the screen in the best way possible.

Black bars don’t distract you when watching such videos at night or in a dim environment. In comes the infamous gray bars. Not only does it look weird, but it also distracts you when watching videos in a dark environment. The gray bar issue appears to have only appeared for YouTube app users on Android.

A report by TechIssuesToday from the past week suggests that a recent app update is to blame for the annoying gray bars. Not to mention, YouTube app users on Android are fuming with this issue and have reported it on X, Reddit, and more.

The behavior has been reversed in beta

The video-sharing platform was aware of the gray bar issue on Android and confirmed it was working on a fix. Today, Android Authority reported that Google has reverted this behavior with a recent beta update version 20.13.32.

However, if you are using YouTube stable on Android, you may still be seeing those gray bars. We expect the fix might be heading to stable as well. So, it’s best to wait for the time being. While YouTube is dealing with bugs and issues, it is also testing a new experimental Premium feature that add recommendations to the playback queue.