Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google has widely rolled out Gemini’s YouTube Music extension.
- With this extension, Gemini can now be used to play your music.
- The extension is available for desktop and Android.
One of the last remaining advantages Google Assistant had over Gemini was the ability to control your music. But that has now changed as Google is widely rolling out a YouTube Music extension for the chatbot.
Android Authority first caught wind of this extension in the Google app v15.17.28.29.arm64. While the extension wasn’t live at the time, we were able to activate it. We were also the first to spot when Google added official documentation to the support page on connecting YouTube Music to Gemini apps. Now 9to5Google reports that the extension is live and rolling out widely to Gemini users.
The YouTube Music extension is off by default, so you’ll have to activate it first. To activate the extension, you’ll need to head over to gemini.google.com/extensions on your PC or Android phone. Once connected, you can use the extension by going to the Gemini website or the Android mobile app and entering a prompt. It appears the extension only works with English prompts, for now.
As the company explains, you can ask Gemini to “show, find, or play music from YouTube Music.” You can also ask for a specific song by title, artist, album, playlist, and so on. For example, you could say, “Find [song name] by [artist]” and the chatbot will dig it up for you.
In addition to finding and playing music, you’ll also be able to control playback. Users will have the following commands at their disposal:
- Pause
- Resume or play
- Stop
- Skip or next
- Previous
- Restart or go back
Google adds that “background play on Android devices is only available to YouTube Music Premium members.”
At the moment, it appears the extension isn’t fully working yet on PC. You’ll just see a response that says, “I can’t assist you with playing media yet, but I can provide you with a link to the song on YouTube Music.”
As this was one of the things Gemini lacked, it’s nice to see this functionality finally roll out widely for Gemini users. However, this extension probably should have been available from the moment Gemini rolled out.