WhileYouTube Musicmay not be as big as Spotify or Apple Music, the service continues its efforts to become a viable competitor. Although big features like podcasts only made it to the app less than a year ago, developers behind the streaming service have been busy at work testingnew visual elementsfor YouTube Music. Then in December, we learned that Google could introduce large buttons in the overflow menu to shrink the long list of controls. These enlarged buttons forPlay next,Save to playlist, andShare, are now widely making it to YouTube Music on Android.
YouTube Music needs to avoid its Play Music mistakes with podcasts
Google has to prove it won’t make the same mistakes with podcasts as it did with Google Play Music.
A couple of people on the Android Police team are already seeing this feature, with a 9to5Googlereportconfirming the development this week. From what we can tell, these big buttons only appear in the overflow menu for songs, which can either be accessed via the three-dot menu in theNow Playinginterface or by long-pressing the song from the homescreen or an album.
New overflow menu with large buttons (left); The unchanged overflow menu for albums, mixes, etc (right)
Meanwhile, the old UI sans the large buttons is still visible within the overflow menu for albums, mixes, and playlists, at least based on my experience. This makes sense, as overflow menus for albums and playlists would require a different set of big buttons, with at least one potentially reserved forShuffle play.
It’s unclear if Google plans to make this change in the future, but as it stands, the large buttons are only limited to individual songs. These buttons don’t appear within podcasts, either. We must note that YouTube Music wastestingStart radioas one of the three buttons as recently as January but has since replaced it withSave to playliston the updated version of the app.
The addition of these buttons within the song overflow menu means there are only six other options below it, starting withStart Radioand ending withView song credits. This view definitely makes things easier for frequent listeners, and we hope it eventually expands to albums, mixes, podcasts, etc. Interestingly, while we’re only seeing six options below the large buttons, the aforementioned 9to5Google report lists up to eight of them, indicating that the redesign may not be complete yet.
