Google is rolling out a subtle, but excellent little change to YouTube on Android. Previously, when you were watching a video and decided to continue browsing, the video would shrink to the bottom right corner as a mini player. While this was originally a pretty good addition to the app, it wasn’t great in that it often covered up quite a bit of screen real estate. Now, with today’s change, you get a smaller, less-intrusive bar in its place.
You can see the change in the images throughout the post, where you’ll get a mini player that displays as a bar across the bottom of the app, just above the navigation. You get play and “X” buttons, but you can also swipe it down to dismiss it at any time. Tapping on it or swiping up will expand it again too.
What about picture-in-picture? That hasn’t changed. If you are playing a video in the mini player bar and tap home, the video then expands to its normal picture-in-picture size.
This change seems to be widely rolling out now. Be on the lookout.
