Summary Some YouTube Music users are seeing a visual change to the Now Playing interface, with a gradient background in favor of a single color.
The new UI design includes floating icons for the Up Next, Lyrics, and Related tabs, a significant departure from the current version of the app.
YouTube Music has recently picked up official support for the Apple HomePod, while also adding support for AI-generated playlist covers in the US.
YouTube Music has come leaps and bounds since its inception several years ago, thanks to the addition of multiple attractive features. While it still lags behind giants of the music streaming business like Spotify and Apple, it continues to improve with each subsequent update, such as with the long-awaited rollout of podcasts this year. The app also picked up a revamp of the Now Playing UI back in June, rearranging some of the key actions within a carousel. Some users are now starting to see yet another visual change to the Now Playing interface, albeit a minor one.
First spotted by Reddit user PrimeNimbleFrog404, this revamp pertains to the background color of the Now Playing UI, which dynamically changes based on the album cover. With this new visual change — which isn’t widely available just yet — the background is gradient rather than being a single color like in the current implementation.
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The current UI (left); The newly discovered gradient background (right)
The Reddit user didn’t specify the version of YouTube Music for Android that enabled this change. However, downloading the latest version of the app (6.23.55) doesn’t appear to trigger its appearance, indicating that this is only rolling out to a limited set of listeners.
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PrimeNimbleFrog404 was kind enough to provide another screenshot showcasing the gradient background of the Now Playing interface in a different color. As 9to5Google rightly points out, the Up Next, Lyrics, and Related tabs on the bottom of the screen are no longer part of a single block and are floating icons instead. As a result, the pull tab from this block has also disappeared.
In response to a fellow Redditor’s query, the user notes that the Lyrics and Up Next tabs continue to appear as they used to on previous iterations of YTM. But with the tabs no longer housed inside a box, they do appear a little misplaced. Perhaps this is something that the developers will try to remedy with a future update.
Whether you like this change or not will depend on personal preference. I like this change as it adds a bit more variance to the otherwise bland background color. But since it’s only appearing to a limited number of YouTube Music listeners now, it’s unclear when this change will make it to the wider audiences.
YouTube Music has picked up a couple of handy features over the past couple of weeks, starting with official support for the Apple HomePod. Google’s extensive investment in artificial intelligence is also reflected across YouTube Music, with another recent update letting US listeners try out AI-generated playlist artwork. Meanwhile, support for podcasts continues to improve on the Google-owned streaming service, as evidenced by the recent addition of automatic podcast downloads on the Android app.