After testing for a while, YouTube Music finally brings the song/video switcher to the web client’s Now Playing UI.
Just above the cover is the song and video selector that has been a staple of the Now Playing screen on Android and iOS.
There are two main use cases for this mixer. The first is to switch between the official music video and the album version of a song, as evidenced by the cover art appearing in the latter case. Your playback position is retained when switching. The picker appears grayed out when songs are not available as videos.
The other use is to turn off the video aspect of a live recording, which just uses the thumbnail as cover art. This is useful for those who just want to listen to audio, users who previously resorted to minimizing Now Playing at the expense of being able to see the Up Next queue.
YouTube Music has been testing the mixer for a while on desktop, but it seems to be rolling out widely now. This is another example of the web client getting feature parity with mobile apps, while the Related tab was introduced in recent months.
Google should also theme the Now Playing background to the album art instead of just a dark background by default. This has been spotted before but never widely rolled out.
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