YouTube Music tests ‘Speed dial’ redesign of ‘Listen again’ [U]

Abner Li | Sep 27 2023 - 2:35 pm PT

The “Listen again” carousel is how I primarily interact with YouTube Music, and Google is testing a larger, more dense version.

Update 9/27: After first appearing in June, YouTube Music is once more testing a redesign of Listen again. However, it’s now called “Speed dial,” which is pretty good branding given the 1-9 nature of this UI.

Google has now moved the now playing indicator to the center of the artwork. One argument for this revamp could be that people don’t really scroll right to left and it’s better to show nine recent works over six. However, the truncated song names remain annoying.

This Speed dial redesign is not yet widely rolled out. Chime in with your thoughts below:

Current, June (Credit: u/astro-gazing), New u/ozxta

Original 6/14: At the moment, Listen again is a 10×2 carousel that shows you six songs, albums, playlists, and artists per screen. A new design that at least one user is seeing adopts a 3×3 grid of cover art with more rounded corners.

The name of the work is in the bottom-left corner/edge instead of appearing underneath. If you’re listening to a track, it will be highlighted in white with a now playing indicator in the bottom-right corner as well.

An extra row is appreciated, while you still have “More” to get the full feed in the top-left corner. This change is nice for reducing YouTube Music’s heavy reliance on carousels, but the shift from 20 to nine items in Listen again is somewhat unfortunate.

This YouTube Music change is not widely rolled out, with Listen again last updated in 2022. Google revisiting a key component is interesting. It comes as the app experiments with a permanent mini-player (as seen above), while live lyrics are still not yet widely rolled out.