[wlesieutre]

> Users are there to consume videos, photos, articles - not to stare at your buttons

But if I want to use the buttons, that necessitates that I see the buttons first in order to use them. If I don't need to see a button, the button probably shouldn't be there at all.

It's not the worst design I've ever seen, but it does feel like they've swung a bit too far in the "users want to focus on the content" direction. The tools to interact with the content are also an important part of the interface and if you can't see them clearly they're not very usable.

[derefr]

Not necessarily. Given how most mobile UX design operates today, in most apps there’ll just be a single glassy hamburger button that opens a (much more legible) menu. You don’t need to read a hamburger button; you just need to know it’s there as a tap target.

Honestly, I think the iPadOS enablement of toplevel app menus + addition of multi-key in-app-menu-action completions to macOS Spotlight, is presaging an iPhone that has a physical “hamburger button” that opens the app’s menu [and pops open the keyboard, to quick-access menu items by key.] Then there’ll be no need for an on-screen hamburger button at all, other than as a fallback for old iPhones that don’t have the hardware button.