Google gives Hum to Search a spherical glow-up [Video]

Introduced in 2020, Hum to Search is an underrated capability and Google has now given it a delightful animation.

Previously, Hum to Search used a fairly standard waveform. Google recently swapped that out for a rotating globe as it records audio and searches for a match. The blue, red, yellow, and green dots also spike out of the sphere for a very dynamic look.

You can access Hum to Search by tapping the four-color microphone icon and then “Search a song” in the Google app on iOS and Android. The latter also offers an old “Sound Search” homescreen shortcut. Gemini does not have a similar “what song is this” capability in another example of it lacking basic voice assistant functionality you’d expect on a phone. It does not even punt the command to Google Assistant (which still uses the waveform animation).

The YouTube app picked up a similar capability on Android last year that’s not yet available on iOS. It’s also coming to YouTube Music where you can quickly save a found track to your library. An automatic history, like Shazam or Now Playing on the Pixel, would be nice.

• Related: Pixel’s Now Playing needs to be thoroughly modernized