YouTube Music Brings Dual-Pane Now Playing Interface

YouTube Music has been working on the split-view redesign for Now Playing for quite some time. The company has now started rolling it out widely, letting you control playback and view the queue together. This change is reaching eligible Android and iOS users through a server-side update.

YouTube Music’s Now Playing screen gets a makeover

YouTube Music’s dual-pane layout for Now Playing changes how you interact with the player. The top portion shows album art along with playback controls such as play and pause. Meanwhile, the bottom half is now reversed for the Up Next queue, so you can quickly see upcoming songs without leaving the main player.

You can swipe anywhere on the Now Playing screen to expand the queue to half-screen. Likewise, swiping up again brings back the full-screen experience. You will also notice a few visual tweaks. The Song and Video switcher on the main screen now uses icons instead of text for a cleaner look, while the cover art appears a little bigger than before.

The company has also updated the progress bar, switching from a thin line to a thicker design. This becomes noticeable when scrubbing through a track, helping you be more precise. The placement of the main playback controls remains unchanged to maintain a familiar interface.

However, we can see changes in the Lyrics and Related sections. They do not show up as fixed tabs at the bottom of the Now Playing screen. Instead, you can access Lyrics just after the like and dislike buttons. As for Related content, you can open it by tapping the song title and a small arrow icon.

The Now Playing redesign is available on YouTube Music for Android (version 9.14) and iOS (version 9.15). The company is pushing this change as a server-side update, meaning you don’t need to do anything to receive it. In some cases, the new design appears after users dismiss the queue and force-stop the app.