Playlists are certainly a big part of YouTube Music’s discovery angle, and Google is now working on a massive UI redesign for them on mobile.
The first two lines record who created the playlist and when it was last updated to the date. (You can only see today’s year.) Next comes the cover art, with the artist’s image highlighted on the left, vertical text on the right, and YouTube Music’s circular logo in the upper-left corner.
Then you’ll get the playlist name and description in a larger font size. All buttons (inside the circle) appear in one row: Download, Add to Library, Play, Share, and Overflow Menu. Previous sharing was next to Cast and Search in the top right corner (no change today). Finally, this top area uses the blurred background of the cover art.
Notably, there is no button for shuffle, while the list of songs remains the same. Strangely, Google doesn’t notice how many songs are in the current collection.
So far, only one (French) user has received this redesigned YouTube Music playlist on a tablet (Galaxy Tab A7). They say it only appears on playlists and not albums. It’s unclear if this is just the case in early testing, or if the new look is only available for playlists. It makes sense for both views to get the same visual update because they are the same today. This revamp may also apply to community-generated playlists as well as algorithmically created playlists for personalized users.
It hasn’t been seen on a few devices we checked this morning. The redesigned YouTube Music puts more emphasis on playlist cover art, while it might be slightly more convenient to have all the controls in one line. It looks a bit on the teeth before.
This joins other recent YouTube Music UI changes, such as last week’s background color splash, new “Mix for You” cover art, new smart download icons, and an improved “Add to Playlist” screen from February.
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