Summary
- YouTube is rolling out a redesigned miniplayer for its Android app (version 20.19.37) based on user feedback regarding its obtrusiveness.
- The updated miniplayer removes the bottom control bar, featuring only overlaid play/pause and close buttons, and introduces the ability to dock the miniplayer to the left or right side of the screen.
- Hiding the miniplayer now pauses the video, and it resumes playback when made visible again; the new design is currently available on Android and could come to iOS as well.
YouTube modernized its Android app’s miniplayer back in October 2024, allowing users to resize and move the minimized video around anywhere in the app with it snapping in place. This, similar to Piture-in-Picture (PiP), allowed users to continue browsing through YouTube while still having an eye on the content they were originally watching.
Since the refresh, the miniplayer’s design has remained consistent, though that appears to finally be changing now.
A miniplayer redesign was first spotted in an early leak on May 1, followed by YouTube itself announcing the update in a recent tweet on X. Now, as highlighted by the folks over at 9to5Google, the updated miniplayer has started making its way to user devices — that too, in stable.
Quoting user feedback as the primary reason for the change, users can now tuck the miniplayer to the left or right of the display with an active video playing. Hiding the miniplayer would immediately pause the video. “When the miniplayer is visible again, it’ll pick up right where it left off,” wrote YouTube.
Elsewhere, during its initial tease early in the week, YouTube said that the miniplayer had been given a ‘little refresh.’ Now that the tweak has begun rolling out, we know that the ‘little refresh’ comes in the form of fewer miniplayer controls.
A new minimalist design
Unlike the implementation that went live last year, the updated miniplayer does not offer a dedicated bottom bar for media controls. Instead, it now only features two controls overlaid on top of the miniplayer — one to pause/play the video, and the other to ‘X’ out. This was likely done in response to user criticism about the miniplayer taking up too much space, even in its smallest form.
For users that aren’t bothered by the miniplayer taking up space, it can still be expanded to fit the width of your phone’s screen. The updated design is rolling out now with version 20.19.37 of the YouTube app. While not explicitly stated, the same miniplayer redesign should make its way to the iOS app too.
