Album and playlist pages in YouTube Music now open with cover art that fills the upper third of the screen for some users.

The change surfaced through several Reddit posts from users who received the new layout, though it looks like a server-side A/B test rather than an app update anyone can download.

A server-side switch lets Google enable the design for a small slice of accounts and gauge the response, a rollout method the company regularly uses before pushing interface changes across its wider user base.

On album pages, a full-width backdrop built from the cover replaces the old boxed-in header and follows the same treatment YouTube Music already gives to artist landing pages, which have used large header imagery for some time.

Beneath the album synopsis, the action bar now splits into two halves, with circular shortcuts for offline downloads and library saves on the left and a larger Play button sitting on the right.

The split layout groups the most common actions together and gives playback a clear visual priority, an approach rival services such as Spotify have long taken with their own prominent Play controls.

Playlist pages receive the same artwork-first approach, with the composite cover built from multiple album thumbnails now stretching across the top of the display in place of the smaller framed version.

Below that header, a comments button joins the download and library shortcuts on the left of the split action row, while the large Play button again anchors the right-hand side.

A dedicated shuffle button now takes the spot the overflow menu previously occupied, and Google has moved that menu to the top of the header, where it sits clear of the main playback controls.

The playlist and album changes follow earlier YouTube Music experiments with a split-screen Now Playing layout and expanded full-screen album art, which together point to a broader redesign taking shape in stages.

Google has not confirmed when the new album and playlist layouts will reach every user of the streaming service, and the design remains limited to a small group of accounts while the server-side test continues.