About YouTube Voice and Audio Activity Saving
When you speak to YouTube voice search, a Google service, Google uses its audio recognition technologies to process your audio and respond to you. For example, if you touch the mic icon in the YouTube search bar to find a video by voice, Google’s audio recognition technologies translate what you say into words and phrases that YouTube looks up in an index to give you the most relevant results.
YouTube History saves the YouTube videos you watch and the things you search for on YouTube to give you better recommendations, remember where you left off, and more.
The optional YouTube audio recordings setting lets you also save audio recordings with YouTube History when you interact with YouTube voice search. The audio recordings setting is off unless you choose to turn it on.
This setting affects anywhere you’re signed in to YouTube and activate voice search, for example, in the YouTube app on your phone, TV or on the YouTube website in your browser.
How audio recordings are used
Google uses audio saved by this setting to develop and improve its audio recognition technologies and the Google services that use them, like YouTube voice search.
For some audio technology improvements, samples of saved audio may be analyzed by trained reviewers, who listen to, transcribe, and annotate it, so they can better interpret the audio, for example, what someone is saying in a noisy environment or in a particular language. We take steps to protect your privacy as part of this process, for example, by disassociating your audio from your account when reviewers analyze it.
This process helps services better understand what people say to them. For example, Google improved automatic speech recognition for data-scarce languages by training a single model on transcribed audio from data-rich languages, which allowed for real-time multilingual speech recognition.
When the audio recordings setting is on
When the YouTube audio recordings setting is on, Google will save audio recordings in your Google Account with your YouTube History when you activate voice search from within YouTube.
Audio might be saved if your device incorrectly detects an activation. We’re constantly working to make our systems better at reducing unintended activations.
If you use your device without an internet connection, audio may be saved in your account once you return online.
When the audio recordings setting is off
If you stop saving, Google will no longer save audio recordings in your Google Account with your YouTube History when you activate voice search from within YouTube. Google will continue to process your audio to respond to you when you speak to Google services.
This setting does not affect audio saved and managed by other Google services, like Google Search and Assistant, which you can also use to search for YouTube videos with your voice. You can control whether audio from Google Search, Assistant, and Maps is saved with your Web & App Activity at activity.google.com.
Other machine learning processes, not controlled by this setting, may be used to improve audio recognition technologies with federated learning or ephemeral learning, for example:
- when the Improve Gboard setting is on, Gboard may save and process audio on your device, using federated learning, to help improve speech recognition for everyone without needing to send what you say to Google servers
- Google may process and analyze your audio in real time to improve its audio recognition technologies, using ephemeral learning which doesn’t require saving audio with your YouTube History. Learn more at yt.be/speechlearningmodels
How to manage audio recordings
You have several options for managing audio recordings, saved with YouTube History, at activity.google.com, for example:
- turn the audio recordings setting on or off anytime under the YouTube History setting
- listen to your audio
- choose an auto-delete option or delete audio manually. Google may delete audio sooner, once it's no longer needed for development and improvement, for example, less audio may be needed for some languages over time
- download your audio at takeout.google.com
Learn about other data Google saves and why and how data is used to improve our services, including how technologies keep your information safe and how controls help you manage your privacy across our services, at policies.google.com.