After well over a year in development, YouTube music adds a "trim silence" option just like Google Podcasts used to have.

To use the new feature, simply start any podcast in YouTube Music and tap on the button labelled 1x, which appears on the bottom left of the screen and lets you control the playback speed. Now, click on the toggle named ‘Trim Silence’ to skip those awkward periods of silence.

Google Podcasts added a handy silence trimming feature back in 2018. As its name suggests, it essentially detected and skipped over long pauses and silent sections in podcasts. YouTube Music hasn't previously offered an equivalent feature, but that seems to have changed sometime over the past month.

Taylor Swift broke the internet. An hour and 44 minutes into Swift’s appearance on the “New Heights” podcast, the live premiere on YouTube abruptly cut to black. Moments later, the “New Heights” X account posted that the stream had encountered some technical difficulties and that the episode “will be back shortly.”

YouTube Music may soon get a new Daily Discover feature, which will offer personalized recommendations from new artists.

Like Spotify, Google's music app offers podcast support— though it's a bit more limited. If you're used to the polish and feature set of a dedicated podcast app (or, frankly, even Spotify), YouTube Music might be a tough adjustment.

The podcasting company, which saw 110 layoffs, is the latest to pivot as the Google-owned video platform ecosystem pushes longform chats as a watchable format.

The podcast was nowhere in sight. YouTube Music had let me down, again. My dream is to have as few apps as possible, and that’s why I genuinely enjoy Spotify’s take on merging podcasts with music.