Sidebars have been on websites for as long as one can remember. However, a lot of development has happened on this front, and many versions of the sidebars have made it to various websites over the years. Some of the websites to have been graced with a condensed version of the sidebar include Google Play Music, YouTube, Hangouts, and Gmail. A few months back, the Cali-based search engine company took the wise decision to include it in its Material Design guidelines and renamed it navigation rail. One of the main applications of this navigation rail had fans excited since it came with the promise of its inclusion in the Android apps using tablet layouts.
Navigation Rails, since its inception, has become widespread, and users stumble across those rails across a variety of Google websites. The main idea behind the rails was to offer easy access to the most important top-level destinations of an app or even a web page.
In this sense, the navigation rails acted as the bottom bars that we get to see on small screens on various websites. However, the thing with small screens is that navigating a website on it most of the time does not have any problem. But it seems like YouTube badly needs to update its app on tablets and bring in a new interface for the same.
The YouTube app on various Tablets becomes difficult to navigate, especially if they are on landscape mode. A number of Reddit users on a thread commented on the difficulties faced by them while accessing the bottom navigation buttons on their YouTube apps for tablets. Perhaps including navigation rails on the tablet app would suffice since the navigation rails help create a smooth transition between mobile and desktop experiences.
Under the discussion thread aptly titled “What app badly needs a tablet interface”, Reddit users made it known that not only YouTube but also Firefox, Instagram, Discord badly need a tablet interface to make it easier to use on tablets.
