Youtube adds voice commands to promote hands-free usage

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YouTube has recently released its voice search feature. The last massive change that YouTube brought was its autoplay control, playlist, mini-window, and key-control. This voice search is a little different from the existing voice to text feature as it provides users with a laidback experience where the voice search results in fast lookup and hands-free navigation commands and not just regular text. 

First-time users have to provide YouTube with microphone permission. The feature can be used by clicking on the microphone icon displayed along the search bar. The icon can be grey or white depending on the theme user has set. When using this feature the video currently playing on YouTube will get automatically paused and an overlaid box will appear on the screen that says "Listening...". Now the user can speak their query.

The feature is smart enough to recognize natural language commands. For example, "show me top songs of Taylor Swift" will just search for "Taylor Swift songs". The feature is a great addition to facilitate a hands-free experience.

This feature can also be used to navigate parts of the YouTube interface:

• ”Show me my library”
• “Show me my subscriptions” or “What’s new from my subscriptions”
• “Show my watch history”

“Show me the latest videos from [channel]” also works to directly start playback from the said channel, and is ideal for quickly starting music.

As of today, YouTube voice commands are widely rolling out on the web for both signed-in and logged out users.

 

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