YouTube started testing a new Black Player on its website back in June. However, videos embedded on webpages still used to appear in the traditional, light-colored video player, that is until yesterday. Today they have rolled out this new player theme to all videos and existing YouTube embeds have been automatically updated to the new “dark player”:
If you have a light-colored webpage, you may prefer the old lighter color player that matches with your design. Google has introduced new color schemes for embedding videos, but there is no interface on YouTube that lets you choose these color options. Instead, you have to edit the embed code to change the player’s appearance.
To get back the traditional white color YouTube player, you just need to add a new “theme” parameter to the embed URL. This is the standard code:
<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lNxhpNpnAkk?" frameborder="0" width="560" height="349"></iframe>
After the video source, add “theme=light” for the white theme.
<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lNxhpNpnAkk?theme=light"
frameborder="0" width="560" height="349"></iframe>
That’s it, you can now use this code to embed videos on your website. Do note though, this new theme option for selecting color scheme is available only for the IFRAME version embed codes.