Following Gmail last week, Play Books, Google Photos, and YouTube Music are set to get new widgets on Android.
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While the YouTube Music web app is undoubtedly more feature-complete than the Android TV experience housed in the main app, it still lacks native Cast integration. That fortunately appears to be changing.
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YouTube Music introduced an “activity bar” last year that generates a “personalized homepage full of playlists” that are centered around one of four moods, and now YouTube is adding a fifth: “Energize.”
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Back in July, YouTube Music lost its very useful ‘Offline Mixtape’ app shortcut, but Google is now introducing “Play My Station” as a pretty good replacement for those that want to start playback immediately.
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In addition to Turntable at the start of this month, YouTube Music on Android 12 is set to get another Material You widget called “Now Playing & Recently played.”
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Starting next month, YouTube Music is getting free background listening in a major revamp of the streaming service’s ad-supported tier. As part of that, the YouTube Music app is going audio-only and will no longer play videos if you don’t pay for Premium.
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Back in September, Google announced that its YouTube-branded streaming service was dropping Galaxy Watch 4 exclusivity and coming to Wear OS 2 devices running the Snapdragon Wear 4100. YouTube Music can now be installed on even older watches powered by the Wear 3100 chipset.
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When browsing the YouTube Music homepage on mobile and desktop, you may soon see a “From the community” section that surfaces user-generated playlists rather than the personally or automatically generated collections.
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At the start of last month, we enabled a new YouTube Music widget for Android that was first teased in Pixel 6 ads. The “Turntable” widget is now briefly appearing for some YouTube Music users today.
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YouTube Music has announced that all users in Canada will be able to access background listening with the mobile apps on Android and iOS for free from November 3.
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In addition to debuting Wear OS 3, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 was the first wearable to have a client for Google’s streaming service. The YouTube Music app is now coming to Wear OS 2 watches.
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With the launch of iOS 15 and iPad OS 15, Google announced a handful of app updates to support the latest platform features today. This includes new XL widgets, Focus mode, and Spotlight support.
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Android 12 brings a renewed focus on widgets with Google Photos and Clock — just this week — serving as key examples. YouTube Music is working on a Material You widget, and we’ve enabled a preview of it.
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Back in the third quarter of 2020, Google said it had 30 million YouTube Premium and Music Premium subscribers. YouTube Music now has over 50 million paid customers.
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We went hands-on with the long-awaited release of YouTube Music for Wear OS earlier week, and while the app certainly gets the job done, it comes with the requirement for Wear OS 3. Unfortunately, that’s a restriction that can’t be easily overcome, either.
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It’s been nearly a year since Google pulled the plug on Play Music in favor of YouTube Music, and in the time since, Wear OS has been left without an official way to tie into Google’s streaming music service. Now, YouTube Music is finally available for download on Wear OS.
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In recent months, YouTube Music has seen a slew of tweaks that refine the app but don’t fundamentally change the experience. That’s par for the course at Google, but what’s been incredibly odd is how the YouTube Music team has not meaningfully talked about any of these new features until last week.
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Back in June, YouTube Music for Android got a redesigned Now Playing UI that did a great deal to help modernize the streaming service, and it’s now finally coming to iPhones.
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In recent months, search has been one area of YouTube Music that Google has been constantly iterating on with tweaks and additional capabilities. The YouTube Music Android app now lets you search songs and albums that you’ve locally downloaded.
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The future is much brighter for Wear OS thanks to revamped software and much better hardware, but current watches are left in a weird state of limbo. Today, Google has revealed that its new apps for YouTube Music and Google Maps on Wear OS are coming out very soon, but they won’t come to older models.
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YouTube Music has the fairly standard concept of adding works to your library. Those saves are sorted and can be found through the Playlist, Albums, Songs, and Artists views, but YouTube Music is now testing a “Library” search filter.
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At the start of this week, Google made the Material You redesign of the Wear OS Play Store official. Alongside that, Google Play on Android phones was also updated with easier install and search filters. Thanks to the Play Store, along with the latest app update, we get a very quick and minor peek at YouTube Music for Wear OS.
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One of YouTube Music’s oldest (and best) features is an “Offline Mixtape” that can be quickly played on Android. Over the course of today, the app shortcut has disappeared for users.
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In addition to testing a “Library” filter, YouTube Music might be getting a “Downloads” tab in search that would address a big complaint about how the application handles content stored offline.
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