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Gemini finally lets you play YouTube Music with extension rollout

As announced at I/O 2024, Google is more widely rolling out the YouTube Music Gemini Extension. On mobile, this finally brings basic phone assistant functionality.

Visit gemini.google.com/extensions to activate @YouTube Music. After connecting, Gemini can access the streaming service and your library for music commands. Google says it only works with English prompts “for now.”

Very simply, “Play [song]” or “Play [artist]” now works on Android to start playback in the background. (On iOS, the YouTube Music app opens to complete your request.) Gemini will show a card that features cover art, artist, duration, and play count.

“Play music that I like” will play your “Liked Music” playlist, while here’s the list of prompt formats: 

  • Find [song name] by [artist name]
  • Find the album [album title] by [artist name]
  • Find playlist
  • Find [genre] music
  • Search for songs similar to [song name] by [artist name]
  • Find the song that goes [song lyrics]
  • Find the [song name] music video
  • Start a radio based on the song [song name]
  • Search for [artist name] songs

There’s also more conversational commands like:

  • Show some rock music
  • Turn on White Noise @YouTubeMusic
  • Play rock music radio
  • Show me songs from modern artists keeping classic blues alive

Issuing commands on gemini.google.com — where @YouTube Music is convenient — shows the card, but you have to click to open music.youtube.com in a new tab. 

I’ve also had luck playing podcasts that are already on YouTube.

This is basic phone assistant functionality that Gemini should have had from day one if it wanted to replace Google Assistant. There should really be a more basic integration that lets you use more media apps on your device. 

In the coming months, YouTube Music will be joined by new Gemini Extensions for Calendar, Keep, Tasks, and Utilities (like Android’s Clock app).

More on Gemini:

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com

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