[Auto] Google Releases a Highly Anticipated YouTube Music Feature on Android Auto

[_Happy boy]

 

The days of Google Play Music are numbered, and Google is expected to pull the service any day now. In the meantime, the company wants everybody to move to YouTube Music, its subscription-based alternative that also comes with support for Android Auto.

But as far as drivers are concerned, using YouTube Music behind the wheel is a huge pain in the neck, not only because it lacks the feature parity with Google Play Music, but also because essential functionality isn’t there.

The good news is that earlier this year Google promised to resolve all these drawbacks, explaining that while it does plan to further refine YouTube Music, it only needs a bit more time to do it.

And it looks like the search company has finally started focusing more on the Android Auto side of YouTube Music, as it has recently released a new feature for drivers. It’s a queue option that shows up when playing a song on YouTube Music both on Android Auto and when streaming music to the car’s speakers via Bluetooth.

An official announcement in this regard isn’t available, and as it turns out, the new feature isn’t powered by a new software update. Instead, what enables it in the car is a server-side switch, and users in this reddit thread explain that the queue button showed up earlier this week in their cars.

At the same time, the new queue option also shows up on Android Auto for phones, so even if you don’t run the app on a larger screen, the queue is still there, and this shows that Google wants to offer feature consistency regardless of the platform that you are using.

For the time being, the transition from Google Play Music to YouTube Music is still under way, so hopefully, Google would manage to resolve other shortcomings in its subscription-based service before it pulls the plug on its old media platform.