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Earlier this year, Google redesigned the user interface being played in podcasts for Android and iOS. Google Podcasts is currently rolling out its next major overhaul with many tweaks that address usability complaints.
As expected, the changes start in the “Home” tab where the podcast carousel is now called “Subscriptions”. This allows Google to add a “More” button which opens a grid view and thus addresses a big complaint among users who follow many shows. The previous carousel-only approach required a lot of scrolling to find a particular podcast.
Meanwhile, the “Home” stream is unchanged, except for each episode card adding an overflow menu in the lower right corner. This allows you to quickly “Share” or “Mark as played”. This saves users the trouble of having to open the full episode page first in order to complete this last action.
“Explore” is unchanged, with the exception of the “Google Podcasts” wordmark – which removes the red “Beta” tag for all users – appearing in the application bar, thus avoiding the double “Explore” with the bar lower.
Finally, in the main navigation, “Activity” is now “Library” with Google dropping the top four tabs that you can easily navigate for a standard list view. We’ve discussed the subscription grid before, with the queue, downloads, and history pretty straightforward.
Beyond these visual changes, the other big issue is how tapping on the app icon / Google Podcasts homescreen no longer resets the location of users in the app and returns them to the “Home” tab. This was due to the fact that Podcasts was part and was an extension of the Google app. After changing this behavior, Google Podcasts acts like any other installed application.
This podcast overhaul began rolling out Friday night for users of the beta version of the Google app. There’s a new 12.30 variant update in the Play Store, but forcing the main Google app to stop from “App Info” will also trigger the redesign.
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