Google has been “revamping” its YouTube Music service over the past couple of months, adding new features and updating existing ones. In November, the platform received the useful “Play My Station” shortcut on Android, and a month before that, Google announced that the free version of YouTube Music would be getting background music playback — a feature usually reserved for premium users.
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A new update has now been released to YouTube Music, and this time the service has received a new “Recently Played” widget for Android. This feature was previewed in October but is now rolling out with version 4.55.55 of YouTube Music for Android, available in the Play Store.
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The widget takes up 5×2 spaces on your home screen by default and is divided into two main sections. The top section gives users the ability to play and pause songs or press “thumbs up.” The album art of the currently playing song will also display some basic information, such as the name and artist.
The bottom is a grid layout shortcut that gives you “quick access to recent videos, albums, playlists, and more.” In the larger 5×4 configuration, you can squeeze 10 items into that section, and you can resize the widget to 5×1 or 4×1, but doing so will hide the bottom item and leave only the play/pause part.
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The Recently Played widget follows the Material You design philosophy of Android 12, also supporting the Dynamic Color feature. If you don't see the widget after updating to version 4.55.55, force quit the app and restart it again.
Information source: phonearena.com
