YouTube Music bug clips album art in Now Playing

Abner Li | Apr 17 2023 - 3:45 pm PT

In recent days, a minor YouTube Music bug sees album cover art clipped on the Now Playing screen on Android and iOS.

Instead of a square in the Now Playing screen, some users are seeing certain song artwork presented as a rectangle with color borders to the left and right. It’s similar to the thumbnail you see in the main YouTube app when watching an audio-only song with no other visuals as a video.

Additionally, the Now Playing area’s themed background, which normally matches the art, does not get triggered and will just be black.

In our testing, this does not appear to be a widespread issue. The issue first emerged last week, and there’s seemingly no pattern as to what songs are affected. The (Android 13) media notification is not impacted by this pseudo-letterboxing.

A server-side change is most likely at fault for this cover art bug, which occurs on YouTube Music for both Android and iOS. There’s no functional impact, but it can be visually jarring. This problem also occurs in the mini-player, thus making it hard to identify what you’re listening to at a glance.