Google trick lets you hum to figure out the song that's stuck in your head

There is nothing more irritating than having a song stuck in your head, but not being able to work out the name of the song or any of the lyrics.

But the days of irritating your friends with ‘da daaa da da daaa na na ooooh yeah’ efforts could be a thing of the past, thanks to Google 's new feature.

The tech giant has launched a feature called ‘hum to search’, which, unsurprisingly, lets you hum to search for songs.

Krishna Kumar, Senior Product Manager at Google Search, said: “Starting today, you can hum, whistle or sing a melody to Google to solve your earworm.”

The feature uses machine learning to transform your hums into a number-based sequence, representing the song’s melody.

Google then compares the sequences with thousands of songs to identify potential matches.

Mr Kumar explained: “For example, if you listen to Tones and I’s “Dance Monkey,” you’ll recognize the song whether it was sung, whistled, or hummed. Similarly, our machine learning models recognize the melody of the studio-recorded version of the song, which we can use to match it with a person’s hummed audio.”

Here’s how to try Google’s ‘hum to search’ feature yourself.

How to try Google’s hum to search feature

1. Open the latest version of the Google app or find your Google Search widget

2. Tap the mic icon and say ‘what’s this song?’ or click the ‘Search a song’ button

3. Start humming for 10-15 seconds

4. Google’s machine learning algorithm will then identify potential song matches

5. Select the best match and you’ll be able to explore information on the song and artist, view any accompanying music videos or listen to the song on your favourite music app