Compared to its competitors, YouTube Music is still considered a newcomer to the music streaming scene. This isn't Google's first rodeo, though, as they've previously made Google Play Music. Since Google Play Music is shutting down, the YouTube Music team is working to bring new features to the service, ranging from major changes to minor quality-of-life improvements. Earlier this year, YouTube Music introduced a feature that lets you upload music, they redesigned the player page, rolled out an Explore tab, and much more. Today, some users noticed that a very useful feature has just been added to the Android app.

A Reddit user named /u/AMO124 from the /r/YoutubeMusic subreddit noticed that they could now swipe left or right on the album art to change songs. Previously, this was only possible by pressing the previous and next buttons, which can be difficult to tap if you're not able to glance directly at your phone. I've been following the YouTube Music subreddit for a long time and users have been requesting an album art swiping feature for a long time, so it's good that Google finally added this basic feature that's found in dozens of other music players. Apart from the new album art gesture swiping, the player buttons have been slightly updated, too. They now trigger a smooth animation when you're switching tracks.

Credits: Amadeo Iafelice (/u/AMO124) on Google Photos

The new feature is only available for a small number of users as of now. We all know that Google likes to roll out new features for users in a staggered manner. There is no way to manually enable this feature via a setting or APK update, so all you can do is sit and wait for the server-side update. We recommend that you download the latest version of the YouTube Music app for Android from the Google Play Store link below, though, in case this feature does require the latest version of the app.