YouTube Music for iPhone gets permanent miniplayer with AirPlay, swipe controls

Abner Li | Sep 20 2023 - 9:41 am PT

Following Android in June, YouTube Music on the iPhone (and iPad) has been updated with a permanent miniplayer that cannot be removed and adds AirPlay by removing “next song” in favor of swipe controls.

Instead of a next song shortcut, you now get AirPlay (and Cast) in the miniplayer. This opens the same menu that previously appeared in the top-right corner of the screen, which is now cleaner as a result, with just search and your account avatar.

As part of this, play is moved to the very right. This will absolutely wreak havoc on muscle memory, but you’ll adapt in a few days.

The big functionality boost here is the ability to swipe right/left for the next and previous song, respectively. That latter action was previously not possible and is a genuine speed improvement.

Lastly, you cannot swipe down on the miniplayer to clear your queue. To do so, open Now Playing and go to the overflow menu, which continues to grow, for “Dismiss queue” at the very top (instead of bottom on Android). This is more complicated than before and much less instantaneous. “Nothing is playing” will appear when there’s no active audio, like after an app restart.

We’re seeing this new miniplayer on iPhone rolling out today via a server-side update with version 6.20 of YouTube Music. (Closing the app from multitasking might trigger the change.)