YouTube for TVs is getting another dose of Gemini, but it could make sense for once

At I/O 2026 a few weeks ago, Google shared an unsurprising stat about its Search. In about a year since its launch, AI mode is already being used by a billion users every month, with the number of queries growing exponentially with each quarter. Naturally, that’s reason enough to bring conversational searches to other platforms, and YouTube is an easy choice given the sheer number of searches it handles. So, last month, Google also launched Ask YouTube, bringing an AI Mode-like conversation search experience to the video platform. While the feature was limited to the web version, it’s not being expanded to YouTube for TVs.

YouTube recently announced that its conversational search tool, Ask YouTube, is coming to the YouTube app on TV. The feature is not limited to a specific platform, such as Google TV, but is instead available on smart TVs, gaming consoles, and streaming devices.

Just as it does on the web, Ask YouTube lets users get results based on a verbose, sentence-like question rather than a specific search term. Along with relevant results, the feature will also list specific sections from various YouTube videos, so you don’t have to watch the clip entirely.

To fetch results in the YouTube app for TVs, users can ask a question while pressing and holding the microphone button on their remotes. Besides holding the physical button on the remote, you can type a few keywords in the search bar and then select the Ask YouTube button for a more conversational view of the responses.

In addition to using the feature over YouTube’s home feed, you can also hold the mic button to ask questions while watching the video. Doing so will presumably initiate a fresh search instead of triggering the existing Ask feature, which lets you ask questions specific to the video.

The test is starting with a “small group of users,” and is expected to be more broadly available soon. Notably, Ask YouTube is currently limited to Premium subscribers in the US aged 18 and above, but the company plans to extend it to users worldwide in the coming months. We expect the same criteria to apply for those watching YouTube on their TVs as well, even though it hasn’t been specified.