YouTube Music is now releasing its 2022-2013 Winter Recap, with some changes compared to previous seasonal recaps, with spring starting.
When you opened the app, the message “Your Winter Recap is here” appeared on full screen. The appropriate page can be accessed by tapping “Get your recap” or by tapping your profile avatar. However, the rollout is a little sluggish; for it to appear, you may need to pull down and refresh.
You can now launch the story UI to view my top winter artists, tracks, genres, playlists, and albums as of this afternoon. Your “favorite live performance of winter” will also be highlighted on YouTube Music, and the final page includes a summary with a “total time” in minutes. Each page can be shared as an image and quickly saved to the device.
Back on the main page, the Google Photos “Musical photo album” integration displays images from your personal photo library to highlight your favorite December, January, and February tracks.
The actual Winter Recap playlist isn’t showing up for me right now. YouTube Music playlists and previously saved recap carousels are all that I see. This feature may not yet be fully implemented.
Overall, it’s a good thing that these are being released by YouTube Music after the season is over so that you can get a more complete collection. Both Android and iOS users can access the complete recap.
YouTube Music outline-style icon redesign
Over 450 system UI and topic channel avatar icons were redesigned by YouTube today in response to the black dark theme and other video player updates in October.
System icons are used in our navigation and other UI components. They’re designed to be simple, modern and friendly. Each icon is reduced to its minimal form, so that users across different languages and cultures can understand and navigate our products.
The change has already been implemented, with some updates, such as the bottom bar, beginning in 2020 on certain platforms. YouTube considered how “icons would relate to user-generated content, their environment, accessibility, internationalization, symbology, and file size” when redesigning the platform.
With our redesign, we wanted to indicate the state without relying on color, so we made two assets per icon symbol. For most icons, the default is a one-pixel outline. Then, when the icon is active or selected, it either thickens to two pixels or fills the shape in. […] And because we no longer rely on color to indicate state, we dramatically increased the contrast ratio of icons in all states to increase legibility.
The outline approach, according to the company, “landed on a truly unique style that balances both sharp and rounded shapes, reflecting the range of serious to playful content that lives on YouTube.”
YouTube likewise overhauled the point channel symbol symbols (Shopping, Live, Gaming, Sports, Digital broadcasts, and so forth.) They took their cues from system icons whenever possible to maintain consistency.
Topic icons leverage colors from our brand palette, featuring bright solid colors paired with vibrant gradients that reflect the spirit and energy of YouTube. This new look sends a clearer signal that these major channels feature exciting content curated by YouTube.
The fact that they are no longer monochromatic is a particularly pleasing modification: We are making them more expressive by using bright colors that make it easier to see which popular categories of YouTube content they belong to.