Photo Credit: Reddit
Real-time lyrics are finally headed to YouTube Music users on both Android and iOS — after more than a year of testing.
YouTube began testing the real-time lyrics feature late in 2022 with its YouTube Music for TV revamp. Last year, users who cast music from the app to their TV reported seeing a new design that appeared to make room for live-scrolling lyrics with verses highlighted. That report came after YouTube Music told its users to expect “even more lyric features in the future” back in October 2022.
The YouTube Music app is one of the last major music streaming services to adopt real-time lyrics. Both Apple Music and Spotify have long had the karaoke-style scrolling lyrics for users to sing along to their favorite tunes. The live lyrics font is much larger than the current static implementation, and appear to be provided by MusixMatch — YouTube Music’s current lyric partner.
For now, the feature appears to be a server-side implementation that is not widely available to everyone. Users can open the lyrics tab in the YouTube Music app while playing a song to see if they have the feature. The expansion is expected to become widely available soon, with rollouts expected to hit Google’s smart home devices like the Nest Hub and other smart displays.
Here’s how to find the lyrics tab in the YouTube Music app.
- Open the YouTube Music app and start playing a song.
- Tap the ‘Lyrics’ tab next to ‘Up Next’ and ‘Related.’
- If lyrics are available for the song, you’ll see them here.
- If you don’t see a lyrics tab, the song has none available.
YouTube Music is still playing catch-up to some of the features that were available in Google Play Music way back in 2018. The shutdown of that service worsened the music listening experience for Android users — and drove many of them to Spotify or Apple Music.