YouTube Music redesign adds a carousel to Now Playing

Abner Li | Jun 7 2023 - 5:11 pm PT

Back in November, YouTube Music introduced a Now Playing revamp that primarily hid the dislike button. This was rolled back at the start of the year and YouTube Music is now testing a carousel-focused redesign of Now Playing.

The song/video switcher, Cast button, and overflow menu are unchanged. Album artwork appears higher and is slightly larger with the rounded corners more pronounced. “Playing from” does not return but that information is already available in the Up next queue.

Like in the abandoned revamp, the name of the song and artist are now left-aligned.

The bigger change is a carousel of actions like thumbs up/down, Save, Share, Download, and Radio. This addresses how the last look only let you like songs. The actions you get are identical to what previously appeared when you tapped on album art, and presumably replaces the old hidden overlay.

L-R: Current, abandoned, and new (u/amirdadp)

What would be interesting to see is how many other controls appear here as this could more or less replace the YouTube Music overflow menu, which has gotten quite unwieldy especially after the addition of song credits and the sleep timer.

The timeline scrubber is lower on the screen with no change to other controls, though the play/pause button is now white instead of being themed. Up Next, Lyrics, and Related appear the same.

Few YouTube Music users currently have this carousel redesign of Now Playing. It was never clear why Google pulled the previous look, which was officially announced in mid-December.