YouTube Music receives minor Material You ‘Themed icon’ makeover

Damien Wilde | Sep 5 2022 - 2:46 am PT

The YouTube Music icon has received a minor Material You makeover to better fit with other changes in the music streaming app — most prominently on Google Pixel phones.

Thanks to the “Themed icons” setting on most Android phones running Android 13 or higher, the YouTube Music icon — like many others — will be drained of color and adhere to the monochrome icon settings with a darkened app logo. Because many third-party skins have not yet fully implemented this feature even in their own versions of Android 12, it’s mostly visible on Pixel phones.

Android Police has spotted this relatively minor but important change to Google’s premier music streaming app. Previously, a dark circle with a smaller light circle highlighted the YouTube “play” button. However, it isn’t clear just how long ago this icon switched. The actual glyph is now larger and takes up more space and makes it easier to spot on a screen littered with similar monochrome icons.

old YouTube Music themed icon

new YouTube Music themed icon

You might not have initially realized that this icon is now more cohesive with the turntable widget icon you’ll see when music is not playing on your device. It looks like Google has just lifted this right off the widget and made it the new icon when the “Themed icons” setting is toggled on Pixel phones.

The only difference being the addition of the darkened border to indicate that this is a homescreen app icon rather than a widget. The color of the actual YouTube Music icon will be determined by the wallpaper color-based Dynamic Color system, so it’ll vary depending upon your own device settings.

Sadly, the pool of apps that actually support Themed icon settings still remains relatively low, but it has improved drastically over the past couple of months. Be sure to check out our full list of all apps currently supported.