YouTube Music Gains New 'Recently Played' Widget Featuring Quick Shortcuts, Material You Design: Report

YouTube Music has been reportedly updated with a Recently Played widget for smartphones running Android 12, featuring play and pause controls, along with a like button. The widget is said to be available on the latest version of YouTube Music and offers similar functionality as music widgets on iOS. Users will be able to use the widget in three size options, depending on their home screen layout, with the widget layout adapting accordingly, says the report. YouTube Music now has three widgets, Now Playing, Turntable, and Recently Played, which offer theming integration with Android 12.

Back in October, Google rolled out a new 'Turntable' widget for YouTube Music users running Android 12, which displays the cover art of currently playing track, along with a button to play or pause at the bottom and a like button at the top. Google has now rolled out the new Recently Played widget for users running Android 12 on their smartphones, as spotted by 9to5Google.

The widget was one of the new Material You widgets advertised along with the Pixel 6 series and allows users to jump back into playlists or albums, or re-watch videos with a single tap. The functionality appears to be similar to music widgets for Spotify and Apple Music that were introduced on iOS 14, that also offer shortcuts to previously played tracks, playlists, and albums.

Google has been busy pushing updates to its apps and tweaking the default theme and layouts to integrate better with the Material You design introduced on Android 12. Apart from YouTube Music, other apps like Google Play Books, Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Calendar, and Google News are also slated to receive new widgets.

Once added to the home screen, users can reportedly resize the widget from a 5x2 layout to 5x4 to show more recent content. For those looking for a more compact layout, the widget can also be resized to a 5x1 layout, or even 4x1, but this will hide the play/ pause controls and like button, the report adds. Both Turntable and the new Recently Played widgets will support 'Dynamic Color' and Material You support for users on Android 12.

YouTube Music users who have updated to the latest version (4.45.55) of the Android app should be able to add the new widgets to their home screen. However, the widgets appear to be enabled by a server-side switch, so some users may have to wait before it is enabled on their smartphones.