YouTube Music’s Android 13 media player updated with thumbs-up

Abner Li | Oct 11 2022 - 1:35 am PT

When YouTube Music was updated to support the new Android 13 media controls, some complained about losing the ability to quickly like songs. The Google streaming service is now bringing back that functionality.

YouTube Music has removed the Repeat button from the Android 13 media player, with Shuffle moving one spot left in the process. The bottom-right corner is now home to thumbs-up. Before the Android 13 support in July, the app had both thumbs-up/down.

I rather liked the ability to quickly repeat from the notification, with shuffle in YouTube Music not making sense if you’re already listening to radio stations/Autoplay. The option to customize what controls you get would be nice, but this might require a system-level approach in the long run.

Android 13 allows for up to five actions: play/pause, next, previous, and two custom choices.

This allows the system to show a richer set of controls that are technically consistent between phones and tablet devices, and also align with how media controls are rendered on other Android platforms such as Android Auto and Android TV.

This change is available with version 5.28.51, which is not yet widely rolled out via the Play Store.

Meanwhile, YouTube Music’s Library tab redesign was pulled in the last week despite being quite stable. It’s no longer available on Android or iOS, and one of the greater inconveniences of A/B testing.