YouTube Music annoyed many Android users when they removed the ‘Offline Mixtape’ app in July 2021. What made this even worse is that this feature is still available on iOS. However, YouTube Music has just released a feature that will make Android users very happy.
YouTube Music is introducing a new ‘Downloads’ shortcut to all Android users. This will make it much more convenient to access and play all your downloaded content from your home screen, even while you’re offline.
If you long-press the YouTube Music icon on your Android device, you’ll reveal the new ‘Downloads’ option just above the ‘Search’ option. You can tap on this directly, and it will start a shuffled play through all of your downloaded music. Alternatively, ‘Offline Mixtape’ only plays a playlist from Smart Downloads.
This new ‘Downloads’ button can be placed directly on your home screen. This makes it an extremely convenient shortcut as you can tap on it and immediately start listening to the music you’ve downloaded. This includes full albums, playlists, or individual songs that have been downloaded. This is much easier than opening the YouTube Music app and then navigating to downloads, and it works offline.
We see this new ‘Download’ shortcut feature on versions 4.63 and 4.64 of YouTube Music for Android operating systems. It seems to have been released in an automatic server-side update. If your YouTube Music hasn’t received the automatic update, make sure to check your app version and manually update it if necessary.
Despite this new release, the ‘Offline Mixtape’ is still available on iOS. It has also received an update that released outline-styled icons, a ‘Library’ tab, and a ‘Now Playing screen.
