Many Google apps have seen significant visual updates in the past few months, ranging from a newMaterial Design 3 account switcherto changes in thebottom barandweb interface. Meanwhile, YouTube remains in a league of its own, despite being a Google property. Breaking this trend of sorts, we are finally seeing a distinct visual redesign in the Library tab on the YouTube app for Android.
Google recently changed theLibrary tab on YouTube Music, replacing lists with a grid focused on larger album art. In its attempt to follow suit, the main YouTube app now has horizontally scrolling carousels for your watch history and playlists, as spotted by9to5Google. The thumbnails for theWatch laterandLiked videosplaylists show the unwatched video count and like counter, respectively. All other playlists usually default to using the topmost video in the list as a thumbnail.
Old YouTube Library tab(left); new UI design(right)
This is a striking departure from the old view which listedHistoryas a singular menu item in the Library tab, and then displayed all the playlists for the chosen account in a long, vertically scrolling list. Longtime YouTube app users will probably appreciate this change, because in the new design you can always tapView allbeside the carousel. This action expands your watch history or playlist collection into a vertically scrolling list, just like on the outgoing UI.
Overall, the Library tab UI is shorter and offers a condensed view of all the content it did previously. However, creating a new playlist is now rather inconvenient because it buries the option at the end of the carousel instead of the top of the vertically scrolling list. It’s too late to fix that in this version, though, because YouTube is already rolling out the new UI. We are seeing it on several of our devices, so it may reach yours soon.
