5 Hidden YouTube Music Features You Should Use

YouTube Music makes playing your favorite songs so quick and easy that after launching the app, all you have to do is find the song you want, press play, and let it do its thing. Most of the time, that’s all you need to do to enjoy hours of playback on this popular music streaming service. But aside from that simple listening experience, many of YouTube Music’s features go unnoticed.

These are usually features hidden in menus or located in places that are often overlooked. So if you don’t normally delve into these menus or browse the interface in general, you could easily miss these underrated tools and options. If you want to maximize your YouTube Music experience, here are five of these little-known gems that you should start using today. These are useful for searching songs and sharing them with your friends.

Sometimes you’d like to share a song with a friend but you don’t want them to listen to the whole thing, just a specific piece. In this case, you can use YouTube Music’s hidden feature: timestamps. It works similarly to YouTube, where you can share a video that starts at a particular point. When you share a timestamped song from YouTube Music, the person who receives the shared link is automatically redirected to the part you selected first.

Here’s what you need to do to share songs with timestamps on YouTube Music:

1. Play the song you want to share on YouTube Music.
2. Skip to the part you want to share.
3. Hit Break.
4. Tap the share icon in the menu above the search bar.
5. Enable the timestamp in the upper right corner of the sharing panel.
6. Send the link through the available apps. Or select Copy link to copy it to your clipboard and share it via your preferred method.

If you have YouTube Music installed on your receiver, the app will automatically open when the link is tapped and playback will go straight to the timestamped section. If they don’t have the app, the link will open in their browser.

Besides timestamps, YouTube Music includes another lesser-known feature for sharing your favorite songs directly to your favorite social media apps. This time, instead of a link to the song itself, you can share some lyrics. Here’s how to do it:

1. Listen to the song on YouTube Music.
2. Press Words.
3. Hit Share.
4. Choose the lines you want to share. You can choose up to five lines, but they must be consecutive.
5. Press Following to continue.
6. Select a background color from the available options, such as mint green and purple.
7. Faucet Share.

You can then choose which social media app you want to share the lyrics image with. Alternatively, choose Share with other apps to send the lyrics image via another application, or select Save image to download the photo to your local storage instead.

Keep in mind, however, that the song lyrics page is a feature that YouTube Music recently placed behind a paywall. If you have a free account, you can only view lyrics for a limited number of songs. Not all songs in the app also have lyrics available, in which case the lyrics option will appear grayed out.

So you heard an unknown song somewhere and wanted to find it in YouTube Music. Well, you’re in luck. The app comes with a hidden feature called Sound Search that lets you hum or sing the song to search for it. It works pretty much like Shazam, but integrated directly into YouTube Music. To use sound search, follow these steps:

1. In the YouTube Music app, go to Research tongue.
2. Press the sound wave icon to the right of the microphone.
3. When prompted, allow YouTube Music to access your microphone.
4. Start humming the song you want to search for. If you know some lyrics, you can sing them too.
5. Keep humming or singing until the search returns relevant results.

YouTube Music will list the three songs that best match the tune and tell you the match percentage for each. You can then listen to the songs and see if it’s what you’re looking for. If not, feel free to search again.

If the song you’re looking for is playing, you can open Sound Search and ask YouTube Music to play the song. It’s usually faster than humming or singing, and YouTube Music can pull up the exact song in just a second or two. From the search result, you have the option to add the song to your Liked Music folder or save it to a new or existing playlist. You can also tap the cover to listen to the song immediately.

If you’ve ditched Spotify for YouTube Music, one of the problems you’re probably facing now is rebuilding your playlists. This can easily take several days, especially if you’ve already created the perfect playlists for all kinds of occasions: house party, road trip, daily commute, work mode. The good news is that YouTube Music (at least for Premium subscribers) allows you to easily transfer your playlists from Spotify using TuneMyMusic. However, this option is buried deep in the settings, so it can be easy to miss.

To find this underrated YouTube Music feature, simply go to your profile icon in the app. Then select Settings and open Privacy and data. THE Transfer playlists from other apps The option should be available at the very bottom of the page. Select it, then follow these next steps:

1. Choose Spotify.
2. In your browser tab that opens, tap Let’s get started.
3. If you’re already signed in to Spotify, tap Accept to connect TuneMyMusic to Spotify. Otherwise, log in to your account first.
4. Select the playlists you want to move.
5. Optional: Change the playlist name by tapping the pencil icon and entering your preferred name.
6. When ready, press Upload to YouTube Music.
7. Select your YouTube Music account.
8. Allow the necessary permissions.
9. Wait for TuneMyMusic to finish moving your playlists.

This may take a few seconds to several minutes, depending on how many songs you have in your Spotify library. Once the transfer is complete, you can now check your YouTube Music library to see all your Spotify playlists. You can edit them freely as you would any regular YouTube Music playlist. Besides Spotify, this service also supports platforms like Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer and Soundcloud.

When you search for songs on YouTube Music, you probably use the name of the song or artist as your search query. But there are actually other ways to search for songs on YouTube Music, and you won’t even need to enter a single letter: you can just enter emojis. Yes, YouTube Music recognizes emojis in the search bar, alone or in combination with several different emojis.

The app interprets emojis at face value. For example, a birthday cake is associated with birthdays, so YouTube Music will display all birthday-related songs and artists in its library. This may include Rihanna’s “Happy Birthday Song” and “Birthday Cake.” If you type in a baby emoji instead, you’ll get a long list of lullabies for babies. And if you use the jack-o-lantern with a candy emoji, YouTube Music will show you Halloween-themed songs. Feel free to play with the emojis available on your keyboard to see what songs they would evoke.