YouTube Music adds ‘Recently Played’ iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets

Abner Li | Oct 19 2022 - 12:58 am PT

Last week, Google rolled out its initial set of iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets, and YouTube Music is now the latest iPhone app to introduce a pair.

“Recently Played” provides “Quick access to your recently played videos, albums, and playlists.” It’s available in a 2×1 configuration that features a grayscale YTM icon, track name, and its origin, like a playlist (and its creator/curator), album (with artist), or song radio. The widget updates shortly after you select a new song.

There’s also a 1×1 widget that shows the app’s logo in the background and song name that’s often truncated. It looks a bit strange, but serves the purpose of quickly starting audio upon tap. This functionality is similar to YouTube Music’s existing homescreen widgets.

YouTube Music’s iOS 16 Lock Screen widget was introduced with version 5.29 on Tuesday. This joins Chrome, Google Drive, Gmail, News, Maps, and Search.

It follows the YouTube app getting rather useful homescreen widgets earlier this month. Meanwhile, YouTube Music is slowly rolling out a redesigned playlist view on mobile after first introducing it for Android tablets.