In the last few weeks, there have been quite many developments in the podcasting industry. However, Google seemed to remain relatively quiet about its own podcasting service. But now, the Mountain View-based technology giant has just redesigned the Google Podcasts Now Playing screen on iOS. Alongside, the company has also rolled out the ability to block recommendations within the app.
To recall, Google Podcasts first revamped its Now Playing screen on Android at the start of this year. The redesigned Now Playing screen on iOS has a lot of UI changes, including the moving of the timeline scrubber, which now appears directly below the episode/show name. Besides the following play/pause and rewind/skip buttons, there now appears a queue and a heart button, both located on either side of the rewind and skip buttons.
Google Podcasts Redesigned Now Playing UI and Other Tweaks
Below the five buttons, viz. Queue, Rewind, Play/Pause, Skip, and Heart, there lie controls to adjust Playback Speed, Sleep Timer, Cast, and an overflow menu. The overflow menu further contains options for recommendations, Share, and Mark as read. These new changes have been rolled out via a server-side update to version 2.0.10 of the Podcasts app on iOS earlier in April. The new tweaks in design make the Now Playing UI look more modern and clean.
It seems like the redesign is a result of the addition of new controls for recommendations. For example, to accommodate “heart,” which tells Google to show “more episodes like this in your recommendations.” Similarly, you can control your Podcasts recommendations by telling the app to “Show fewer” from the overflow menu. Alternatively, you can also block shows from recommendations for content. The good thing is that you can see a full history of all your Podcasts’ customizations on the Google My Activity page. The feature is already rolled out on Android.
