Design experiment or gradual rollout, we aren’t sure yet
YouTube Music is Google’s Spotify rival, vying for a spot among the best entertainment apps around. The app’s content library remains reliant on the main YouTube app, but Google makes every effort to keep it up to date with new features and visual enhancements. One such change, a transition to a grid layout from lists in the Library tab, seems to have graduated to the testing phase before making its way to YouTube Music users.
The current YouTube Music library tab view
In August last year, we saw YouTube Music starting to experiment with a new Library tab design, which rolled out widely earlier this year. It arranged all the items into a list view. Now, at least one Reddit user is seeing a redesigned interface (via 9to5Google) where the items are shown in a grid view comprising two tiles per row. The new interface prioritizes cover art for albums, tracks, and playlists, with the title and artist details mentioned underneath instead of appearing beside the cover art like in a list.
The new grid view (left); You can toggle to a list view too (right)
The new grid interface also includes a one-touch toggle beside the sorting options, so you can revert to a list view if you know your playlists by heart and would rather have the song names show up big and bold. After all, the grid view shows just four items at once while the list shows at least eight. However, it is nice to have a choice because the grid view makes for larger touch targets, a desirable feature on large-screen devices like foldables and tablets. After all, the desktop site for YouTube Music uses a grid view by default.
The rollout pace of the new view and its scope remain a thing of mystery, though. It is live on a few of the Android Police team’s devices, but we wouldn’t call it a widespread rollout yet.
