YouTube Music starts getting lyrics support on the web

YouTube Music’s desktop app starts catching up to the mobile experience.

What you need to know

• Google has started rolling out lyrics support to YouTube Music’s desktop app.
• It’s a server-side switch, so not all users have access to it yet.
• Google introduced lyrics to the mobile app just a few months ago.

Google is rolling out an update to YouTube Music on the desktop that adds lyrics support. It’s not for everyone just yet, but some users on the r/YouTubeMusic subreddit have reported access to it (via Android Police).

Just like on mobile, users will have multiple tabs on the now playing screen and be able to navigate between the queue and lyrics view. Like we said above, it’s a server-side switch, so there’s nothing you can do to trigger the update on your end.

Google rolled out lyrics support on YouTube Music months ago alongside a small redesign to the mobile app. It has since then started the process of killing off Google Play Music for YouTube Music. The new service is set to be Google’s only music streaming service by the end of the year.

On the desktop, YouTube Music is a fairly decent experience, but it’s not as good as the Google Play Music web app which it replaces. As of today, you still can’t stream from YouTube Music’s desktop app to a Nest Mini or any other Google Cast device, you can do so from Spotify or Google Play Music. It’s an egregious omission, considering how one would expect Google’s premier music streaming service to work with its smart speakers.

With Play Music scheduled for execution before 2021, Google still has some time to implement those missing features. There are signs that Google is listening to complaints from its most engaged customers. Last week, the company delivered the following statement to Ars Technica when confronted around an adjacent feature-omission between the YouTube Music app and the Google Play Music service:

We understand that uploaded content is an integral part of the listening experience for many of our users across YouTube Music. While several features for uploaded content aren’t currently working in the free YouTube Music experience, we’re working hard to address these feature gaps and bring additional functionality to our free tier user. We look forward to sharing more updates soon.

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