The other day I was watching the documentary The Beatles:Come Back , which flashes on the screen the names of the songs currently playing and which missed the identification of a song which I did not recognize. " What was that? I asked my partner. He didn't know either.
ContentsTurn on now playingTurn on the search buttonManage your notificationsFind your now playing historyMake it easier to find your historyWhat if you don't have a Pixel?But my Pixel 6 didn't miss it. Looking at my lock screen, it said "Dig a Pony The Beatles", thanks to Android's Now Playing feature.
Now I'm not a huge music fan – I'm the type of person who listens to the same album over and over again, and when I hear a great new song, instead of immediately searching source, I tend to think, "Hey, that's good," and leave it at that. But now, when I hear something I kind of like and suddenly remember it, I can look it up in my current playlist. Or if I'm watching a movie and I'm like, "Okay, I've heard this song before," I can turn to my phone and immediately find out the name and artist of the song.
And Now Playing also works offline (which I tested by putting my phone in airplane mode and then playing a song I hadn't listened to before).
If this is a feature you're interested in and you have a Pixel 2 or later phone, here's how to set up Now Playing and what you can do with it.
As mentioned before, the way Now Playing works is that it relies on a device-based music database, which is why it can work offline. However, some of us enjoy darker music, which may not be among the thousands of songs in this database. If so, there's now a cloud search that can add your own favorite songs to the database via a search button on your lock screen. (Unfortunately, this feature is only available if you have Pixel 4 or later.)
To enable this feature, go to your now playing screen and enable "Show search button on lock screen".
When your Pixel identifies a song, it will not only put it on your lock screen, but make it available through your notifications. You can manage both of these and more by going to the Now Playing screen and tapping Notifications.
What can be as useful, if not more, than seeing what song is playing is accessing the history of the music that has been around you. You can access it by following the same choices as to enable the feature ("Settings"> "Sound &Haptics"> "Now Playing") and selecting "Now Playing History". Once there, you can tap on a song to play it on your favorite service.
And yes, it's a pain to have to go through all these steps to access your now playing history. If you find you check your history often, it's probably a good idea to put a direct link to it on your home screen so you can just tap and watch. Here's how:
Currently the Now Playing feature is only available on Google Pixel 2 and later. However, there may be a few workarounds if you're feeling experimental. XDA Developers found one:a background music module, which has been confirmed to work on some OnePlus devices and may also work on other Android phones.
And, of course, there are also apps that will help you identify songs. For example, the popular song identification app Shazam, which was acquired by Apple in 2018, is available for iOS and Android. It doesn't work offline and you have to tap the icon to start the identification process, but it's a great alternative for those without current Pixels.
