YouTube is close to losing that preservation. It's so slow and clunky to load in the desktop browser that I'm finding myself using it a lot less. It's absurd how heavy it is now.
UX is getting worse too, e.g. the save to list dialog closing after adding to a single list instead of allowing multiple to be selected. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't take forever to open.
A few things I can’t stand about Youtube’s desktop website:
1) Spacebar sometimes skips to the next video when playing a playlist. Just why?
2) You never know if the small buttons like play next on the thumbnails will work or just play that video right away.
2) when on the homepage, you open a few videos in new tabs and close the homepage only to find out that you just open bunch of “this video contains paid promotion” disclaimer pages. Re-open the homepage to actually open the videos and they are all gone, the page shows a grid of different videos.
so yes, I agree that the web interface went downhill.
glad it’s not just me. we used to have multi-playlist saves with a modal that showed more than three pixels of your library. now it’s slow, cramped, and forces you to hit SAVE over and over even though the backend supports it. feels like a regression dressed up as bad UX.
I am using it less because I can't find any videos as the search is completely broken (no, I won't enable history tracking). Many days when I am in the mood to watch videos, I just give up. It doesn't help now that most searches return AI-generated video (that has millions of views). Who watches these things?