RIP muscle memory: YouTube Music shuffles Now Playing screen buttons

YouTube Music is one of the most popular music streaming apps out there. Offered to YouTube Premium subscribers at no extra cost, the service provides an extensive music catalog — featuring unofficial tracks and covers unavailable elsewhere. Though, since Google owns it, the Spotify rival is bound to go through unnecessary mutations every now and then. The latest YouTube Music test tweaks the Now Playing screen’s UI by moving its buttons around.

First spotted by Redditor u/Jumfrov (via 9to5Google), YouTube Music is testing a new Now Playing page that shuffles its buttons around. Those impacted by this change will notice that the primary button row, which includes shuffle, rewind, pause/play, next, and repeat, now lives right under the song’s name. Meanwhile, the secondary button row encompassing likes/dislikes, comments, save, and share has moved towards the bottom of the screen, as shown in the screenshots above.

Beyond repositioning the buttons, YouTube Music has also updated the timeline on the Now Playing screen. The prominent playhead is no longer visible when you’re not scrubbing through a track. Instead, it presumably appears when you interact with the timeline. This makes the page somewhat sleeker and not as bloated.

Given that this redesign is still in limited testing, it’s unclear whether YouTube Music will roll it out broadly or revert affected users to the older UI. Ultimately, Google often experiments with changes that never see the light of day.