Members can opt to have their recent songs downloaded automatically
YouTube Music is always growing with new feature additions, though it isn’t without its fair share of frustrations. Regardless, more than 80 million listeners are on YouTube Music and a good portion of them are paying for the Premium tier. A subscription entitles customers to a handful of benefits including ad-free music, thus giving ample incentive for people to switch over from rival services. We can now add one more perk to the list with a new toggle appearing within the Android app’s settings.
This toggle, labeled “Recently played songs,” was mentioned in the February 2023 YouTube Music Highlights post and picked up by 9to5Google. Flip the switch and YouTube Music will automatically download up to 200 songs based on your recent history. It operates separately from Smart downloads, meaning “Recently played songs” will be downloaded even if Smart downloads is switched off.
Premium account holders can enable the Recently played songs toggle by navigating to “Downloads & storage” from the YouTube Music app’s settings page. Google says the new toggle began rolling out on January 12, but most users have only started seeing it in the past several days.
Google didn’t mention where these automatic downloads would appear and there’s no visible playlist containing these songs either in the home screen view or within the Library tab, but the company’s phrasing suggests that they’re only intended for offline listening.
If you’re ever stuck somewhere without an internet connection, both “Smart downloads” and downloads from “Recently played songs” sound like decent options to fill your entertainment void.
