Summary
- YouTube Music is adding a disconnect option to its casting menu, but it doesn’t stop playback on the cast device.
- This comes after the app’s initial redesign removed the Stop Casting button from the menu.
- The new Disconnect from TV button is also available on older versions of YouTube Music, suggesting that it’s rolling out through a server-side update.
The YouTube Music team has been experimenting with a redesign of its casting sheet for a few months now. The idea was neat, as it provided users with a larger list of available devices or targets around them. This came at the cost of the Stop Casting button, though, which meant that users had to tap the This phone option from the casting sheet to stop playback from the connected device. YouTube Music then began widely rolling out the redesign in late April, still without a replacement for the old Stop Casting button. This decision expectedly came under fire from plenty of users, which has now reportedly led to YouTube Music making a course correction, sort of.
In a bid to pacify critics of the recent casting menu redesign, YouTube Music is now rolling out a Disconnect from TV option hidden away within the three-dot menu next to the volume slider (via 9to5Google). But instead of completely stopping playback everywhere, this button merely ends the connection with the phone, while the content keeps playing on the cast device, which in my case was a Chromecast with Google TV.
Far from perfect
Ideally, you would want this disconnect button to stop playback everywhere, including the cast device, and not just the phone. So we’re hoping this gets fixed in an upcoming update. This minor redesign with the Disconnect from TV button is already available on my Android phone running version 7.02.51, which isn’t the latest iteration of the app. This indicates that the feature should be available widely as part of a server-side update for most app users.
It’s unclear whether YouTube Music will stick with this Disconnect from TV option or bring back the Stop Casting button that people were quite accustomed to in the past. Frankly, this new option feels far more complicated than the initial redesign of the casting sheet which required users to tap This device to stop playback on the cast device, followed by the pause button on the app to halt playback completely.
What do you make of this new Disconnect from TV button?
