YouTube Turns Mobile App into Voice Remote Control

YouTube is enriched at the end of the year with several features. One of them transforms the application available on Android or iOS into a voice remote control. It is used to control the YouTube application present on certain connected televisions. YouTube is also announcing the compatibility of its Fire TV app with Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant.

YouTube is taking advantage of the end of the year to improve its service. Google’s streaming platform published a message this weekend on its support site, which showcases all of the latest news. They are three in number. And they are not all useful for all users, since they mainly concern the transversal experience (understand between two viewing media, whether it is a television, a decoder, a console game and / or smartphone).

The first, and certainly the one that will generate the most interest, is the voice remote control function . The idea is to use your smartphone to initiate a voice search which will be executed on another device, in particular a connected TV. A function that is reminiscent of that offered by Apple with the iPhone and Apple TV (in the latter case, remote voice search is also universal and is not limited to YouTube).

The prerequisite: have a smartphone and a TV with the YouTube application installed on each of them. Note that the smartphone operating system should not be mandatory Android, since it also works with the iOS version . You must also be logged into your account on both applications. The streaming platform hopes that searching YouTube on a connected TV will be simpler.

Targeted recommendations, even on TV

Second novelty, the function which allows to create several profiles with a single account has been extended to the application installed on connected televisions. If you have created several profiles for each family member in order to obtain targeted recommendations for each, these will now be supported in your living room . The active profile is visible in the context menu on the left side of the screen. And it is in this space that it is possible to switch from one user to another.

Latest news, the YouTube version dedicated to Amazon’s Fire TV is now Alexa compatible . It is therefore now possible to make voice requests with the virtual assistant preinstalled in the decoder of the merchant site. The compatibility of YouTube with Fire TV is still very recent, since it only dates from October. It follows the reconciliation of the two American firms . At the same time, HDR compatibility for YouTube has been extended. It is now coming to the latest Sony home consoles, the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 4 Pro.