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How to find your Now Playing history on your Google Pixel
Never forget that song you heard ever again
Now Playing is one of the best Pixel-exclusive features. It can automatically identify any song playing in your environment and display the title and artist on your lock screen. It's the perfect way to identify any song quickly.
Have a song stuck in your head? Here's how to find its title by using Google
Find the song stuck in your head!
Few things in life are as irritating as slow internet speed or a song stuck in your head. While you install these Wi-Fi 6 mesh routers in your home to solve the slow internet speed issue, let us tell you how you can find a song's title, even if you only partially remember the tune, using Google. So next time you are at a party and want to add the groovy music blasting in the background to your playlist, or you can't remember the song stuck in your head, you can use the steps below to identify the song.
Google's Now Playing is getting smarter with detailed music stats on Pixel phones
It's a lot like Spotify Wrapped, but on demand, and without Spotify’s involvement
With Pixel phones, Google takes advantage of tighter control over hardware and Android software to include some quality-of-life features like Magic Eraser, Guided Frame, and Now Playing. The latter is a handy utility that automatically identifies music playing around you, so you don’t need to summon Google Assistant for the same capability. Apps on the Play Store have since replicated this always listening feature, but Google is now improving its implementation with a new interface and collection of statistics from all the identified music.
This free app brings Pixels' Now Playing passive music recognition to your phone
Prop up your playlists with this handy little app, now with a no-root option!
Shazam and SoundHound are useful tools when you're out on the town and want to know what's on other peoples' soundtracks so that you can take those songs and, perhaps, boost your own playlists. Pixel phone owners do have it pretty good, though, because Now Playing makes that ability passive. If you're jealous, we've got a homebrew app that's come a long way for you to download and try out.
This person’s Pixel 6 thought a toilet flush sounded like Adele's hit single
Rumour Has It this only affects this one specific combination of phone and toilet
If you have a Google Pixel, you've long been able to enjoy an incredibly smart feature, Now Playing — Don’t You Remember? It allows your phone to analyze sound around you constantly, helping you identify songs currently playing. All of that is happening locally on your device, without it ever automatically sending what is heard to any Google servers (though you can do that manually for more results). However, without the power of the cloud, things can go wrong, and Pixel phones sometimes produce nonsense.
Now Playing on Pixel phones is making it easier to keep track of songs worth hearing again
Not that you'll hear any of those from now to December 26th
Google keeps plenty of features exclusive to its Pixel phones these days, but in my experience, nothing is more useful than its Now Playing tool. With a frequently updated local database and always-on listening, modern Pixels can detect nearby songs and silently display them on the lockscreen, all without any action on the user's part. With an upcoming redesign, Now Playing is about to get even more helpful — and more powerful.
If your Pixel can't tell what song is playing, maybe Now Playing's new cloud search feature can
Why wasn't this a thing already?
Google's Pixel phones have had a feature called Now Playing for years. Basically, your phone keeps a record of several thousand songs for offline detection, letting you identify them when one's playing nearby. And it works pretty fine. Or at least, it works fine as long as your song is popular-ish. While an offline equivalent to Shazam built right into the system is amazing to have, it couldn't possibly identiy every song you might run across. Now it looks like cloud search is coming to help do something about that.
Android 12 Beta 4 so far seems to have fewer changes than prior releases — which makes sense, given how close we're getting to the final, stable release. Among those spotted so far include a handful of lockscreen related tweaks, including a slight change to the size and spacing of the Google Sans Text typeface for Now Playing, a new icon for the wallet/Cards & Passes shortcut, and a return of the padlock lock screen indicator icon.
YouTube Music now lets you swipe on album artwork to change songs
Can't believe it didn't have this before
YouTube Music has picked up a familiar feature: the ability to swipe on album art in the Now Playing interface to change tracks. It's a surprising omission, and it hasn't rolled out to everyone yet, but customers coming from Google Play Music and other streaming services like Spotify will appreciate it.
Google Podcasts is a relatively new product, and it shows due to the lack of some features we take for granted in podcast players. The service is slowly getting there though and has recently added a desktop version and automatic downloads. Right now, Google is working on a rather minor interface change that still makes listening to podcasts a more pleasing visual experience. For some, the Now Playing screen has grown bigger and has added a three-button overflow menu with further options.
Google first debuted a feature called 'Now Playing' with the Pixel 2 and 2 XL, which listened for music being played around you and matched it with a locally-stored database (it doesn't send a continuous stream of audio to servers for matching). The Pixel 4 was announced today, and among its many upgrades include changes to Now Playing.
Google's Pixels don't precisely come with "stock" software, the company bundles in some Pixel-specific tweaks. Among those additions are the Pixel Launcher, which is most recognizable these days by its iconic "At a Glance" widget up at the top. Many third-party home screen replacements aim to mimic the clean design of the Pixel Launcher with their own version of that widget, and Lawnchair launcher just expanded the widget's functionality to work with a whole pile of new providers, with more on the way.
One of those subtle Android features that Google makes exclusive to Pixel devices is "Now Playing." Introduced with the Pixel 2, it scans for music in the background and shows you what song is playing on the Ambient Display. According to our friends at XDA, location and activity tracking may be coming to Now Playing's history menu soon.
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Several months ago, Spotify began testing a new Now Playing interface that left us scratching our heads. It removed both the replay and queue buttons from the main UI and hid them under the secondary menu. Of course that was not a smart move, and Spotify is now rolling out (server-side) another take on that redesign, but with more sensible decisions. And I like it.
One of the coolest little features that came with the Pixel 2 was Now Playing, which would listen out for any music that was playing around you and try to identify it. It's basically an always-on Shazam that shows you the track names on the lockscreen.
The Pixel 2 and Pixel 3 both have a feature called Now Playing that automatically identifies music playing from nearby sources. It's a neat trick that's currently significantly better on the Pixel 3, which provides a history of identified songs. That functionality gap will be closing in the near future, though, when Now Playing History makes its way to the Pixel 2.
The Pixel 2 and 2 XL brought a new Ambient Display feature that automatically recognizes nearby playing music and displays the song's title and artist without you having to launch Shazam or any other music ID app. The third-generation Pixels will up the ante with a log of all the identified songs.
The Pixel 2 has been in and out of the news here for issues both major and minor, and today we have a somewhat humorous one. Apparently, it is possible for installed apps, like Words With Friends 2, to interfere with the "Now Playing" music recognition feature. Google is aware of the issue, though, and thankfully it's not that big a problem.
Just before Google's Pixel 2 launch event, we learned of a great new always-on feature that listens for music and displays the song name and artist on the lock screen without even being asked to do so. Now Playing even works without an internet connection, as it keeps a local file containing identification data for nearly 20,000 songs. It won't be able to name everything you hear out and about, but anything vaguely popular should be picked up.