YouTube Music is finally gaining a major feature Spotify has had for years

When I switched from Spotify to YouTube Music, one feature I immediately missed was the ability to search for a song within my playlist. When you have a playlist with a few hundred songs and just want to quickly find one, it makes life much easier. This feature has been requested for a long time on YouTube Music, and it seems like Google is finally addressing it.

Recently, a Reddit user reported seeing a new “Find in Playlist” option appear in the YouTube Music app on iOS. The Redditor, who says they live in India, states that the feature is available for them in version 8.45.3 of the app (via Android Authority). You can see what it looks like below.

Here’s how it works: when you open your playlist on YouTube Music, you can tap the three dots to the right of the play button to open the playlist settings menu. From there, you can select the “Find in Playlist” option to search for a specific song. So, if your playlist on YouTube Music contains hundreds of songs, you can quickly find any song in it by searching for its name and play it, without leaving your playlist. However, there is a huge caveat at the moment.

Playlist search isn’t widely available on YouTube Music yet

Spotify and Apple Music already have their own versions of playlist search

While it’s great to see a search option finally implemented into YouTube Music, unfortunately, this appears to be a limited test that the Redditor encountered, and the feature isn’t available widely yet.

On Reddit, tons of users reported not seeing the feature yet, and in particular, no Android users had seen it appear, only iOS users. So it seems this is a regional A/B test Google is only running on iOS for now.

Still, even though it’s not available to everyone yet, it seems YouTube Music listeners are just finally happy to see it being worked on after all these years, with one Redditor saying, “We got playlist search on YTM before GTA VI,” and another saying, “I switched just in time to see those improvements. Bravo YouTube!”

However, there is already some criticism of the feature, as a couple of Redditors rightfully point out that it is hidden in a three-dot menu rather than being easily accessible directly in your playlist via a search bar, without having to open any menus, as Spotify does with its “Find on this page” playlist search feature.

YouTube Music’s Playlist search feature is still being tested, so it’s entirely possible Google will change it before rolling it out to a wider audience and more regions on iOS and Android. As for when that could happen, that’s up in the air. It could be a few weeks or a couple of months. But given how long this feature has been requested on YouTube Music, hopefully it’s sooner rather than later.

I recently switched from Spotify to YouTube Music, mainly because I already pay for YouTube Premium, which includes YouTube Music. While YouTube Music works relatively well, I can’t help but miss Spotify sometimes, and at least this feature will help make YouTube Music more comparable to use, whenever it launches.