YouTube Music rolls out miniplayer redesign with permanent Cast button

Abner Li | Jun 29 2023 - 1:01 pm PT

After it first started appearing last month, YouTube Music is now widely rolling out a permanent miniplayer design.

Cover art, song name, and artist at the left are unchanged. You also still get play, but it’s now at the right with a Cast button in the original position. That opens the same “Cast to a device” menu, with that button getting removed from the app bar.

This does make the app’s top-right corner cleaner with just search, account avatar, and History (in the Library tab). However, not everybody uses Cast, and the shortcut remains even when you’re not connected to Wi-Fi and on cellular. It’s just inefficient.

With the next song button gone, you can now swipe left, while going right takes you back. This is a nice addition, but so far, the new play position is wreaking havoc on my muscle memory.

Given the addition of swipe gestures, you can no longer swipe down on the miniplayer to clear your YouTube Music queue. This was presumably done to not interfere with left/right interactions. So far, the only way we’ve found is to individually remove each song from Up Next. This is highly annoying and might not be feasible if it’s very long. (Tip: Starting a song from search results in a single-item queue.)

The miniplayer will note when “Nothing is playing.” As of today, we’re seeing this change rolled out on Android phones and tablets. It’s not yet on iOS.

Again, being able to swipe left/right is nice, but there needs to be a button in the ever-growing overflow menu to quickly clear your queue.

For the most part, this change was opposed by YouTube Music users, and it appears their feedback was not enough in getting the company to change its mind.