iTunes 12.6.0.95 mini player

Wouldn't it be nice if Apple actually TOLD us what they were changing? The large artwork is fine but I would have liked a heads up that the small artwork was removed and that the mini play isn't as "mini" as it used to be. I thought I had a bad download until I checked this forum. Typical of Apple to change things and not tell anyone.

After tinkering around this is what I can say pretty definitively about the new user interface ...

Large Artwork - Track info displays by default. On mouse over track info changes to transport control.

Small Artwork - Accessed by manually resizing the window. Neither track info nor transport control displays by default. Transport control displays on mouse over. Track info does NOT display ... even on mouse over which is a step back in functionality.

Thumbnail Artwork - is totally gone. Track info displays by default. Transport control displays on mouse over.

So I like the clean, new look. But I don't care for how there's no way at all to see Track Info anymore when displaying the "Small Artwork" which is my default view. I can get to it by displaying "Large Artwork" so it's not the end of the world. More of an "annoyance". I never use the "mini" view personally but I can imagine that for those that do the removal of the "Thumbnail Artwork" is an unwelcome change as well.

PS: As someone with a software development background I can see what Apple is doing here. The "Track Info/Transport Control" window is likely a single, reusable piece of code now. And I suppose from a "Developer" perspective that's a good thing. But these days I'm a "Product Manager" type and if it were my team I would have insisted that the shortcomings above be addressed as a "usability" issue.

I have nothing profound to add, but I thought I'd offer some before-and-after visual aids:

In iTunes 12.5, if we wanted a REALLY small MiniPlayer, we had this (which includes a thumbnail of the artwork):

In iTunes 12.6, we have this twice-as-big charmless gray box with no visible icons:

I'd love to know exactly how Apple thinks that these are improvements.

Hi - I don't see an option for small artwork, but there is a way to turn off the large artwork:

Shrink to the smaller MiniPlayer: In the row of controls, click "...", then choose Hide MiniPlayer Large Artwork. To expand back to the full MiniPlayer, click "...",then choose Show MiniPlayer Large Artwork.

I am starting to suspect that there were complaints about the size of the text in miniplayer so they increased the text size and, to do so, eliminated the small artwork. The artwork always gave me an indicator on whether I was playing from an internet station such as Radio Paradise vs. an album/playlist.

The new mini player is twice the size it used to be. Now I've got this large ugly monochromatic blob in the corner of the screen. How about a heads up next time. iTunes just keeps getting worse and worse.

I have the same issue and feel very annoyed that cannot get back my small artwork!

If it is about the text size or anything; Apple should have just give the user the option to customize the mini player the way we want, and show/hide the small artwork instead of leave us stuck with this update at a sudden.

Too bad Apple...

Let me add my voice to those disappointed with this "update" that in my opinion "fixes" what wasn't broken. The Mini-player used to sit nicely beside the Dock in my iMac, taking up zero workspace; the "improved" version is twice as high and encroaches on my working area. I'm not prepared to shrink my application work areas just to accommodate an unattractive, less useful menu.

I've found an app in the app store called BarTunes that places a minimal iTunes controller in the menu bar. It's actually going from one extreme to the other as it's very small and basic but some people might prefer it to the new iTunes "mini" player.

I have found the same bug. Besides all of the other problems with the 'new and improved' mini player, it appears that they added a bug as well. I never understand the idea of change for change's sake. What was the thought process behind these changes?

Yeah, what's up with the flaky close button? One moment it's there and then suddenly you can't get it! Only way I have found to get it when it has disappeared is to hover the "expand" pointer over where it should be and double click.

As usual, Apple messing with stuff for the sake of it, making it clumsier, harder to use and less intuitive. I liked having my artist in the mini player and now it's this great carbuncle of a thing in the bottom corner of the screen. So hoping that something like ONYX ends up offering a hack to go back to the old style player (unlikely I know, unless that already exists in the OS).

What absolute rubbish! I thought I'd picked up a bug, did the old restart - no dice. What's the point in having a mini player which is no longer mini? The old mini player was just perfect, this dominates the view so I can't see other stuff going on - rediculous!

Surely there must be an applescript or something to overcome this annoyingness....

This is when people develop products they don't use. Implement changes or so called features nobody needs.

I have no problem with changes, but why is there something called "preferences". How about putting in something where you can choose from different MiniPlayer designs.

The new ugly large MiniPlayer is useless and not intuitive.

I totally agree. Tried to download an earlier version but it wouldn't open up my library. It appears, somehow, iTunes 12.6 makes the library unusable with an older version of iTunes. Very much miss the album artwork thumbnail in the mini view. Anyone know of a workaround for this?