YouTube Tests and Experiments with New Features, Including Hum to Identify Songs

What are the new features on YouTube?

What are the experiments with YouTube features?

To make it easier for us to locate, view, share, and create videos, the YouTube product teams are continually testing out new tools and features. These beta features, sometimes known as "experiments," are frequently only accessible to a small number of users for a brief period of time.

If you ever find that YouTube appears a little differently for you than it does for a friend or member of your family, Google says that you are probably witnessing one of these trials. Be careful to provide YouTube with comments and identify any potential technical concerns as the YouTube teams utilize this data and the findings of their experiments to determine whether, when, and how to make these capabilities more widely available.

Here are some of the latest features of YouTube that are currently under testing:

Testing additional song search options on Android
The YouTube team is experimenting with the idea of allowing users to hum or record a song that is now playing in order to find it on the site. If you're participating in the experiment, you can switch from YouTube voice search to the new song search tool and hum or record the song you're looking for for three or more seconds so that it can be recognized. You will be directed to appropriate official music content, user-generated content, and/or shorts featuring the searched song in the YouTube app after the song has been located. A limited segment of YouTube users who use Android devices is starting to participate in this experiment.

Testing a channel shelf for many uploads in the subscription feed
Teams at Youtube are beginning to experiment with grouping together several uploads from a single author in a short period of time into a shelf in the subscription feed. The Youtube teams are experimenting with this for a few reasons, including making it simpler for users to find the content they're looking for, relieving creators of the burden of uploading frequently, and facilitating user interaction with the content in the shelf and/or navigation to other content while scrolling through their feed. The YouTube team is initially testing this upgrade on a small subset of users.

​Mobile Q&A sticker testing for shorts

YouTube teams are experimenting with stickers that let creators ask questions of their viewers in order to make it even simpler for short film makers to develop communities with their fans. Viewers can respond to queries from creators in the comments. Other viewers can see audience replies by reading comments made on the short where the sticker was utilized. A small number of creators will be able to participate in this experiment; these creators will be able to use Q&A stickers while making shorts on mobile devices, and their fans will be able to view the stickers across all devices, but they won't be tappable on desktop or TV.

​Here are the additional tests that YouTube teams ran this year:

• Testing out automatic "key concepts" for videos linked to learning
  
• On channel homepages, a new "For You" section is being tested.
  
• Evaluating channel page layout changes
  
• Putting AI-generated summaries to the test
  
• Testing comments-featured shorts made by viewers
  
• Mobile quizzes created by AI are being tested.
  
• Experimenting with fresh hashtag ideas for long-form videos
  
• Testing Studio's capacity to produce and evaluate podcasts
  
• Images in community tab poll postings on iOS are being tested.
  
• Short titles are experimenting with new hashtag ideas.

In order to improve YouTube for artists and users, Google is working on and considering all feasible features.