Full-screen player and Now Playing
The full-screen player shows the cover large with the song details, and one panel next to it: the queue, similar songs, lyrics or the visualizer. This page also covers its settings, the idle auto-open and the Now Playing page.
Opening and closing
Open the full-screen player in any of these ways:
- Click the cover in the player bar.
- Press the Lyrics or Visualizer button in the player bar. They open the full-screen player on that tab.
- Use the hotkey Toggle full-screen player (see Hotkeys).
- Switch on Player bar opens full-screen player (Settings → General → Player bar) and click an empty part of the bar.
- Switch on the song/video switch for a YouTube Music song (Music videos); the video is shown here.
Close it with the Minimize button (the arrow at the top left), the same hotkey, or Esc.
When nothing is playing, the window says “Nothing is playing.”
What you see
The top-left corner has two buttons: Minimize and Configure (the gear, see below). The top-right corner has five tab buttons:
| Tab | Content |
|---|---|
| Up Next | The play queue, with the same toolbar as the side panel. See Player bar and queue. |
| Related | Songs similar to the playing one (up to 50), when the song’s server can provide them. Right-click or use the menu on a row as usual. |
| Lyrics | The lyrics with their buttons. |
| Visualizer | The visualizer (spectrum, or Milkdrop where available). |
| About | Facts about the playing song and its credits, see below. |
Click a tab to open its panel; click it again to close the panel, and the cover moves to the middle. One panel is open at a time.
On the left are the cover (or the music video) and, under it, the title, the artists, the album and badges with technical details such as the codec. The title and the artists are links. A long title scrolls like a marquee unless you chose wrapped titles. When a DJ picked the playing song, a line under the album says why (see Why this song?).
The background takes its colour from the cover and changes with each song.
The visualizer tab has an Expand visualizer button at its top right that fills the whole window with the visualizer, with the song name in a corner. Use Shrink visualizer or Esc to go back.
About this song
The About tab shows three to five short facts about the playing song (what the title and the lyrics mean, how it was made, its release and how it was received), in the app language. Gemini writes them with Google Search, using the AI DJ’s key and text model (see Gemini key); without a key the tab says so. Every fact carries links to the web pages it rests on, and a fact without such a link is left out. If nothing with a source is found, the tab says so instead of showing a card. Searched for links the searches Gemini made to Google.
Under the facts are the Credits (writer, composer, lyricist, arranger, producer, mixing, engineer) from MusicBrainz, with a link to the recording there. Listen uses the song’s MusicBrainz recording id when your server has it, and otherwise searches MusicBrainz by title and artist. Many recordings, K-pop especially, have no credits there yet; then this part is missing.
The card is fetched when the tab is open (and again when the song changes while it is open), then kept for 30 days per song and language. Look it up again fetches a fresh one. One card costs up to three Gemini requests: when Gemini’s answer comes back without source links, Listen asks again.
In a narrow window (768 px or less) Listen uses a phone-style layout instead: a header, the cover, the details, a progress bar and the transport buttons, and a bottom row with shuffle, repeat, queue and lyrics. The queue and the lyrics replace the cover while they are open.
Settings of the full-screen player
There are two places:
- Settings → General → Full-screen player has Full-screen auto-open timeout and Configure…. The same dialog opens from the gear inside the player.
- Configure opens the dialog Full-screen player. Changes apply live behind the dialog; press Done to close it.
| Setting | Range | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dynamic background | on or off | on | Colours the background from the cover. Off uses the theme background. |
| Use the cover as background | on or off | off | Shows the blurred cover instead of a flat colour. |
| Image blur | 0 to 6 rem | 6 | Blur of that image. |
| Opacity | 0 to 100 % | 25 | How strongly the background is darkened. |
| Use the cover’s aspect ratio | on or off | off | Shows non-square covers whole, instead of cropping them to a square. |
| Cover size | 55 to 100 % | 75 | Cover width as a share of its column. The cover also never gets taller than the room above the song details. |
| Alignment | Left, Center, Right | Center | Where the cover and the text sit in their column. |
| Title | Scrolling or Wrapped | Scrolling | One line that scrolls when too long, or a title that wraps. |
| Title lines | 1 to 10 | 1 | Lines for a wrapped title. Shown only for Wrapped. |
| Metadata badges | checkboxes | Codec, Release year | The badges under the title. |
The available badges are Codec, Bit rate, Bit depth, Sample rate, BPM, Year, Release year, Date, Release date, Release type, Genres, Disc number and Track number. A badge is skipped when the song has no data for it.
Auto-open
To open the full-screen player on its own, for example when the computer acts as a music display, set Full-screen auto-open timeout to a number of minutes (1 to 120). After that many minutes without a mouse move, click, scroll or key press, while a song is playing, the player opens. Press Esc to return. The default, 0, switches the feature off.
Now Playing page
The Now Playing page is the queue as a full-width page, with the same toolbar and tools as the side panel. It also shows the number of songs, the total time and the play-mode button. Open it by clicking the song title in the player bar. To add it to the sidebar, enable Now Playing in the list of items in Settings → General → Sidebar; it is hidden by default.
While the page is open, the side panel and drawer are not shown, since the page already shows the queue.