YouTube Playables will let you play games, just like in Netflix app

Google has announced that it has started testing a new experience on YouTube called ‘Playables’. Playables are games that can be played directly on YouTube on both desktop and mobile devices. Currently, a similar gaming experience is provided by the streaming giant Netflix.

On September 05, 2023, the tech giant announced on the ‘YouTube test features and experiments’ page, “We’re starting to test a new experience on YouTube called ‘Playables’. Playables are games that can be played directly on YouTube on both desktop and mobile devices.”

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Users who are part of this experiment will see a section on YouTube called ‘Playables’ that will appear alongside other content on the home feed. 

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Playables are currently being tested with a limited number of users. Users can view and control their Playables history and saved game progress in YouTube History, the company noted.

Last month, Google had started experimenting with the ability for users to search for a song on YouTube by humming or recording a song that’s currently being played.

Users in the experiment can toggle from YouTube voice search to the new song search feature, and hum or record the song they are searching for for over 3 seconds in order for the song to be identified. Once the song is identified, they will see relevant official music content, user- generated videos, and/or Shorts featuring the searched song in the YouTube app. 

Also, the company had announced the feature that bundles multiple uploads from a single creator within a short amount of time into a shelf in the Subscriptions feed. With this feature, Google aims to make it easier for viewers to find the content they’re looking for, to put less pressure on creators to upload multiple times a day, and to make it simpler for viewers to engage with the content in the shelf and/or navigate to other content while scrolling in their feed.