I constantly get earworms when I hear songs and I just can’t get it out of my head till I find it. the unfortunate thing is sometimes I just do not know the words. Especially these TikTok jams. So when I heard about this new feature from Google, I just had to try it. At Google’s SearchOn 2020 live stream, the company announced that you can now have Google tell you the name of a song by whistling or humming its tune. Pretty crazy right? Here’s how it works.

Google: Humming and Whistling is a Tech Thing Now

How it works is interesting;

1. A Google AI cluster in the cloud analyzes the tune you’re humming
2. It then turns it into a digital waveform
3. This then helps sort through the mountain of data that was fed into the AI.
4. When it finds a match, it spits it back out with a link to the proper YouTube video.

It’s probably using the same AI that Google already uses to identify music on the Pixel lock screen through the Now Playing feature.

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I prefer it on Telegram

But let’s set aside from the technical stuff, it’s live right now for almost everyone so you can try it, too. Just take your phone, ask Google Assistant, “What song is this?” then start humming or whistling until it tells you the answer.

It’s not perfect every time, but it’s right often enough to be useful. It has worked every time I have used and I am never searching for music any other way. It even works for Kenyan music. Whoosh.

It uses the cloud, so you’ll have to be online, and there are no new terms of service, so it falls under the Google Assistant privacy umbrella. Your slightly out-of-tune humming is going to a Google server to be further analyzed, but it’s anonymous. You can now rid your brain of those musical earworms.