YouTube Music is easily one of the most widely used music streaming platforms, thanks to its vast library and mostly because it’s bundled with YouTube Premium. The app experience too continues to evolve with time to make it feel more user-friendly and polished. In one such development, YouTube Music is seeing a major change with Search now being moved to the bottom bar.
YouTube Music shifts Search from the top corner to the bottom bar
This change will make one-handed usage much easier while also aligning with other popular streaming platforms like Spotify. In the current state, YouTube Music’s bottom bar has four main tabs: Home, Samples, Explore, and Library. With this change, Search replaces Explore. The top-right corner of the app now just has the profile menu and Activity/notifications feed.
Tapping the Search icon brings up the keyword for you to start typing. Voice and Song search remain in the same place. It also presents the list of recent queries and then the Explore grid with New releases, Charts, Moods and genres, and Podcasts. This apparently gives users access to most of the previous dedicated Explore page experience.
It’s reportedly rolling out widely
For what it’s worth, Google has reportedly been testing this change since last year, and it’s now finally out. This isn’t any major functionality-changing upgrade; instead, it makes the app experience more refined, especially for one-handed usage. This new redesign is reportedly rolling out with YouTube Music version 9.22 on iOS and 9.21 on Android. It’s apparently rolling out widely, but if you don’t see it, Force stop it from App Info.
This change comes after YouTube Music recently gained more playlist sorting options that many users have been requesting. It finally allows users to sort by Title, Artist, and Album. They join the existing Top-voted, Manual, Newest first, and Oldest first options. Rival platforms like Spotify and Apple Music have had more sorting options for years now.
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