At the start of last month, we enabled a new YouTube Music widget for Android that was first teased in Pixel 6 ads. The “Turntable” widget is now briefly appearing for some YouTube Music users today.
After installing version 4.48.51 of YouTube Music, “Turntable” will briefly appear alongside the existing “Now Playing” widget, which does not currently appear to be getting a redesign.
The new one provides “Quick access to your most recently played tracks” and is 3×2 by default. You can expand it to take up the entire screen with the inner disc adjusting accordingly. That circle shows cover art with a play/pause button in the bottom-left corner and like/unlike in the top.
Given that there are only two actions, Turntable is not too useful for playback controls. Rather, it’s handy for getting back to a song.
In our briefing testing this afternoon, the cover art does not spin when music is playing. It also doesn’t appear to rotate with the current play position. This would have been very whimsical, but Google’s original Material You reel is more aspirational than fact.
A spinning widget would presumably have been resource-intensive, but maybe that’s something planned for the future. Another difference is how “start a radio” is not available from the widget.
Sideloading version 4.48.51 will cause the new homescreen item to appear in the Android 12 sheet and be usable for a minute or so, however, once YouTube Music syncs, the Turntable widget is removed and you’re left with just Now Playing. On the upside, a server-side update any day now could enable it.
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