YouTube Music isn’t the most feature-rich of all the music streaming services, but it is a great option for those who love music videos, user-generated content, and the YouTube ecosystem overall. If you have YouTube Music, or are considering switching from another platform, these are the best tips and tricks to get the most out of your listening experience.
If you’re moving to YouTube Music from another app, you don’t have to start from scratch. YouTube has a direct integration with Apple Music for playlist transfers. For other streaming services like Spotify, you can import using third-party apps like TuneMyMusic or Soundiiz for a fee (for a one-time transfer, you only need to subscribe for a month). To move data from Apple Music to YouTube Music, sign in to Apple Music and choose Request to transfer a copy of your data > Apple Music playlists > Continue. You’ll need to select your Google account and tap Confirm Export.
Upload your own music to your library
If YouTube Music doesn’t have something you want to listen to, or if you want to add your personal library to the platform, you can upload up to 100,000 songs from your computer. That said, there are some limitations when uploading music. Other users won’t be able to play those songs in shared playlists, and they won’t be considered for your YouTube Music recommendations. To upload your own content, either drag files to music.youtube.com on desktop or click your profile photo and select Upload music. Files must be FLAC, m4a, mp3, OGG, or WMA.
Pause your watch history to keep content from influencing your recommendations
Spotify has an “exclude from taste profile” option that allows you to keep specific tracks or playlists from influencing your personalized recommendations or appearing in your year-end Wrapped. YouTube Music’s analog isn’t as nuanced; instead, you can pause your overall watch history, which means videos won’t show in your history or be used for recommendations. Note that this setting applies across both YouTube and YouTube Music if you’re signed in with the same account. To pause your watch history, go to Settings > Privacy & location or Privacy & data and flip the toggle next to Pause watch history.
Another option is to exclude videos you’ve liked on YouTube from your YouTube Music recommendations. Go to Settings > Recommendations or Playback & Restrictions and toggle off Show your liked music from YouTube.
Improve streaming quality with EQ, playback, and normalization
For the best listening experience, you can adjust a handful of YouTube Music audio quality settings. First, go to Settings > Data saving (on Android) or Playback & restrictions (on iOS) > Audio quality on Wi-Fi and select High or Always High. You can do the same for mobile data streaming from this menu and for downloads via Settings > Background & downloads or Downloads & storage. YouTube Music listeners on Android have an equalizer, which allows you to customize bass and treble levels across nine bands or choose from music genre presets. You’ll find this under Settings > Playback > Equalizer. YouTube Music also recently introduced an audio normalization feature for consistent volume across tracks, though it doesn’t appear to be available to all users.
Save data with audio-only streaming
When listening to YouTube Music on mobile, you may not always want the data drag of videos, especially if your connection is poor. You can disable video playback with audio-only mode, which will switch music and podcasts that have video to audio-only versions. On the app, tap your profile photo and go to Settings > Data saving or Playback & Restrictions. Flip the toggles for Don’t play music videos and Don’t play podcast videos. Note that this feature is available for Premium subscribers only.
Use Smart Downloads to manage device storage space
YouTube Premium subscribers also have a mobile feature called Smart Downloads. When enabled, YouTube will automatically download recommended videos to your device for offline viewing. The setting is turned off by default, but if you enable it, you can select how much storage space you want to allot to downloaded content. Go to Settings > Background & downloads or Downloads & storage and flip the toggle next to Smart downloads. You can then set the slider to your chosen storage capacity. There’s also an option to have YouTube Music automatically download up to 20 of your recently played songs. Note that downloads will only occur when you’re connected to wifi and will pause when your device storage is low.
What do you think so far?
One way to find relevant content on YouTube Music is to search with hashtags, which creators can add to titles and descriptions of videos and playlists. Simply type the # symbol followed by the keyword, which can be anything from an artist or genre, to #newmusic or #live. YouTube Music also allows search operators (like a standard Google search), and it has a Sound Search function that uses your microphone on mobile to identify a song being played, sung, or hummed, which you can then save to your library.
Invite collaborators to shared playlists
The most popular music streaming services all have some type of collaborative feature, from Spotify’s real-time Jams to Apple Music’s shared playlists. On YouTube Music, collaboration allows multiple users to contribute to a playlist and add songs and videos. To invite collaborators, tap the pencil icon on a playlist, tap Collaborate, toggle the Collaborate feature on, and tap Invite collaborators to share the link. Playlists must be either public or unlisted for collaboration. A more recent addition called Taste Match will automatically generate a new playlist every day based on participants’ listening history. Taste Match can include up to 10 users. In the YouTube Music app, go to the Library tab and tap New > Taste match > Invite to share the link.
Use this feature to generate playlists with AI
Also like most other music streaming platforms, YouTube Music now has an AI-powered playlist generator, which uses Google’s Gemini to translate natural language requests into custom playlists. In the Library tab, tap New > AI Playlist and enter a prompt, like “gentle rock with emotional depth” or “artists like [favorite artist].” I got decent results with these simple prompts, but some Reddit users note that more specific and detailed inputs tend to yield better outcomes.
Use these workarounds to block ads on the free tier
If you’re not paying for a premium YouTube Music subscription, your listening will contain ads. An obvious fix is to upgrade to a paid plan (though some Premium subscribers have still been served ads) or you can try a workaround. One option is to listen through Brave Browser, which blocks ads on desktop and mobile without the need for a third-party extension. I’ve also seen users frequently recommend installing an ad blocker like the open-source uBlock Origin in Firefox or DuckDuckGo.
