YouTube is releasing a major update that gives users new ways to find and manage their content on the platform.
The most important of these changes is the official launch of the Song Search tool, which lets you look up a song just by humming, singing or playing a tune directly from YouTube. It works similarly to Shazam, where you can point the app on a phone at the source of a song so it can record it. YouTube’s version uses AI technology “to match the (input) with the original recording.” This was first seen back in August when it was still in beta, and it looks like the final version will work in exactly the same way.
You activate first Voice search on YouTube, then you switch to the song recorder, where you “play, sing, or hum” the tune into your phone’s microphone for about three seconds. From there, “relevant official music content” will appear on the screen.
Number search will be exclusive to Android phones “for now” and will be rolled out in the coming weeks. No word on when it will arrive on iOS, although we did ask.
The rest of the update is less restrictive as the other features will be more widely available. There’s a lot being added, so we’re only going to cover the more notable changes, like the introduction of the You tab.
According to the company, this new section combines a user’s account page with the Library tab to create a one-stop shop where people can configure profile settings, find downloads, and view previously viewed videos. It saves you the hassle of jumping back and forth between sections.
The YouTube player also gets additional controls. On mobile, a ‘Stable Volume’ toggle switch will be added to ‘reduce jarring volume differences’. This can be quite useful for content with poor audio mixing. Next up is the lock screen that does exactly what the name suggests: it locks the screen of a smartphone or tablet “to prevent unwanted interruptions.”
Finally, holding down the YouTube player immediately increases the “playback speed to 2x”. Press to 2x, as the feature is called, will be made available on the web, mobile devices and tablets.
Everything you see will be rolled out “gradually to (users) around the world” over the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for the patch when it arrives. There’s more to come as the company teases that it’s “bringing modern design elements to other parts of YouTube, like the YouTube Kids app.”
If you’re planning on traveling soon, check out TechRadar’s list of the best YouTube proxies for 2023. Not every global region offers access to the platform.