After providing convenient shortcuts to its YouTube iOS app via homescreen widgets, the same treatment is now rolling out for YouTube’s Android app. Thanks to the new Material You redesign of the widgets, you can have quick access to the app’s search and other core parts.
With this update, you will soon be able to search on YouTube while tapping the next field that opens the app with the keyboard open. You can also use voice search using the widget. There are Quick Action buttons as well that will help you browse and search YouTube quickly as well. You can tap on the quick action buttons to access the Home, Shorts, Subscriptions, and Library tabs or feeds.
YouTube recently announced that it will be giving separate tabs for Shorts and Live videos on the channel page to clear out the clutter in the channel’s Videos tab.
YouTube’s Material You makeover also brings newer widgets
However, as noted by 9To5Google, these quick action shortcuts disappear once you resize the homescreen widget to 3×2. The widgets come with Material You makeover and also take advantage of the Dynamic Color theming that essentially applies the coat of the color of the most dominant color on your wallpaper.
The new YouTube homescreen widget for the Android app with the Material You makeover is rolling out with the app version 17.43.36. This update follows the broader update that brought a darker theme, the pinch-to-zoom feature, precise seeking, ambient mode, a dark mode, and new buttons that started rolling out a few weeks back.
Do note that the update is rolling out gradually and may take some time to reach all Android devices. It won’t hurt to look for a new update for the app on the Google Play store, though.
