New Xbox One YouTube app has voice search but doesn’t support Kinect

1 min. read

Published on March 16, 2018

published on March 16, 2018

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The official Xbox One YouTube app updated earlier this week with a cleaner, streamlined design that loads significantly faster than the previous version and looks a lot better too.

One rather odd addition to the new YouTube app is the option for voice search which can be activated from the Search screen by pressing LT on the Xbox One controller. Once activated, the app prompts for the user to say the phrase they want to search YouTube for and, while this works with a headset, the app can’t detect anything spoken to the Kinect sensor.

Microsoft has been shifting away from the Kinect sensor for a while now but it’s extremely odd that any app with voice functionality would ignore the peripheral considering that owners of it would be the biggest supporters of voice commands in general and would likely use the Kinect to play and pause YouTube videos within the same app (that functionality thankfully does still work with Kinect).

Are you frustrated by this oversight or are voice controls something that you very rarely use anyway? Let us know in the comments below.

Radu Tyrsina

Radu Tyrsina has been a Windows fan ever since he got his first PC, a Pentium III (a monster at that time). For most of the kids of his age, the Internet was an amazing way to play and communicate with others, but he was deeply impressed by the flow of information and how easily you can find anything on the web. Prior to founding Windows Report, this particular curiosity about digital content enabled him to grow a number of sites that helped hundreds of millions reach faster the answer they're looking for.