Since its launch,YouTube Musichas been playing a lot of catch-up with its competitors. Companies like Spotify and Apple Music have had features likelistening statsandreal-time lyricsfor quite some time now but Google’s streaming service has only added those this year. As YouTube Music continues to mature, it’s adding a new way to skip a song in its mini-player.
Like every other streamer out there, a mini-player shows up at the bottom of the app when you’re playing music. While most have a pause and skip button, YouTube Music is trying to differentiate itself by removing the skip button entirely and replacing it with a cast option instead. Users looking to change songs without bringing up the full-screen player can simply swipe one way on the track to get to the next one or the other to go back to the previous one.
The new swipe controls(left)vs. the old mini-player(right)
This UI change hasn’t been rolled out to everyone just yet. Only a number of people have received the new feature, and it’s unclear when or if it’ll become widely available. As neat as this feature might be, it could cause some accidental song changes if your hand slips, which could explain why Google has also removed the swipe down gesture to dismiss the mini player in the updated UI.
Out of all the upgrades YouTube Music has gotten, the mini-player refresh might be the only one in recent memory that wasn’t lifted from its competitors. While YouTube Music only justreceived a sleep timer, Spotify has had one for years.
Google’s streaming service is also trying to become a hub for podcasts as it recentlyrolled them out to YouTube Music. The catch, however, is that podcasts are only available to US residents. It’s unclear when this feature will expand internationally.
If you’re only now looking into signing up for a streaming service, it might be worth understanding what it does better and worsewhen compared to other platforms like Apple Music.
