YouTube Music Has A New Player Design With Better Controls

Over the last day or so Google rolled out a new player page design for the YouTube Music app on Android devices.

It comes with an improved design that Google says offers better playback controls for the user. Now, this will be a little bit of a subjective statement as “better” may not mean better for everyone. Some users may prefer the way the older controls were.

That being said, Google designed the new playback controls to feel more accessible. One key example is that all the buttons you may interact with are now on the screen without having to touch any part of the interface to make them appear.

That means you can tap everything right away. Making it a more fluid design with less stuff getting in the way of you listening to your music.

The new YouTube Music player page has all your controls in one place

Even if you liked the controls the way they were before, the new design is definitely easier to interact with. At the very least it take less time to do things.

With the new player page controls, your fast forward/rewind, pause/play, shuffle, and repeat buttons are all right under the album art and song progress bar. The thumbs up and thumbs down buttons have been moved too. They’re now just below the album art instead of on the sides of the skip track buttons.

Prior to this new look (which hasn’t rolled out to everyone yet), the shuffle and repeat buttons were tucked away in a menu below the rest of the buttons. You’d have to extend this menu to find them by tapping the up arrow in the bottom right corner. Which keeps them out of view and is a more cumbersome design.

Now, they’re all in one place and readily accessible at any moment.

Now you can always flip between songs and videos

Another new, more accessible change is the ability to flip between songs and videos. In the new design, there’s a button (toggle) up top above the album art that lets you seamlessly switch to one or the other.

It’s in direct view and you can move back and forth without breaking a sweat. You can also now tap on the album art to access download options, sharing options, and adding songs.

You’ll soon be able to access static lyrics too. This is likely already visible for some users. But it’s being rolled out currently so there may still be some users who don’t have access to them.

Since the update started hitting devices as of March 3, you may have the new design already waiting for you.