YouTube Music for Android tests shows Search at bottom bar

Online music streaming service YouTube Music rolled out fast and seamless switching between audio and music videos. The Android app is A/B testing an elevation of search at the bottom bar. Instead of having search at the app bar, next to the profile avatar, one of the users has found it in the bottom bar.

With the second tab, the look up is between the Home and Hotlist and the Library rounding out main parts of YouTube Music. The Search label along with the generic magnifying icon are leveraged. Such an improvement creates a lot of convenience as YouTube’s Music’s search capability is actually pretty powerful. The best features, lyrics and descriptions of the streaming services often work to find the song that the listeners are looking for.

While talking about the larger devices, the new bottom bar placement makes the search easier to access and in terms of the visibility, the functionality appears in slightly more places as scrolling would previously hide the app bar. With four tabs, it is likely to be the optimal number of menu items for the client. The only drawback is that there is a changed back behavior after entering and scrolling through the search results.

Instead of returning to the previous screen, the system back button allows the users to exit from the app. A tap of the bottom bar is essential to navigate anywhere else. However, the YouTube Music search engine is currently being A/B tested and it has also appeared on one of the reader’s YouTube account across multiple phones.

Photo Credits: Instagram