YouTube Music has been testing an update for the app’s Now Playing page for some time now. While first hints of this redesign emerged over a year ago, the Google-run streaming service was found making additional adjustments to the Now Playing screen a few months ago. Now, YouTube Music is experimenting with some more changes.
Screenshots of the revamped Now Playing page shared by a user on Reddit, and backed up by others, highlight the return of the Song/Video switcher, which lets users switch between audio-only and video versions of songs.
Furthermore, the switcher removes the Song and Video text in favor of just icons. While the lack of text may be unwelcome for longtime YouTube Music users, this is an improvement over the previous redesign, which pushed Video into the horizontal carousel.
A non-controversial redesign could be on the horizon
Current vs upcoming
Meanwhile, the three tabs at the bottom for Up Next, Lyrics, and Related have either been moved around or repurposed. Lyrics is fairly easy to access as it finds a home within the carousel, though its placement is inconsistent during this phase of the experiment. Ideally, you’d want it to be front and center and not hidden from view.
Up Next will continue to function as it previously did, but will now adopt the name of the playlist, album, or mix you’re playing, as 9to5Google points out. The Related tab will no longer appear, though users can still find related songs by tapping the song name directly with this updated interface.
Another key change here is the placement of the carousel. It now appears below the song and artist name, whereas a previous redesign positioned it toward the bottom of the screen just below the progress bar. Speaking of which, YouTube Music also removes the playhead from the progress bar as part of this revamp, with the bar becoming slightly thicker as you scrub through a song.
Current vs upcoming
Additionally, the queue UI (shown above) gets an update that unlocks a dual-pane interface, offering more playback controls than before. All of these changes should be largely non-controversial, unless YouTube Music has more revisions on the horizon.
These updated elements on the Now Playing screen are not widely available to everyone, as YouTube Music is rolling them out as part of an A/B test to some users. This also means we don’t have a clear timeline for the broader rollout of this updated Now Playing page, though we hope the wait isn’t too long.
What do you make of this redesign so far?
