Find out what music is playing near you

To learn more about the music you hear around you, you can have your Pixel phone automatically identify a song.

With the Now Playing feature, you can get info about songs that play nearby. You can also get a list of songs you’ve played and share, search, or listen to them.
You can find notifications whether your phone is locked or not.

Important:

Some of these steps work only on Android 10 and up. Learn how to check your Android version.
Some of these steps require you to touch the screen.

How do I get song info automatically?

Open your phone's Settings app.
Tap Sound & vibration Now Playing.
Turn on Identify songs playing nearby.
- Make sure that your phone is charged and connected to Wi-Fi.
Wait a few minutes while your phone downloads the song database.
After the download, your phone automatically identifies songs playing around you and shows them on your lock screen.
To learn more about a song:
- On your lock screen, tap the name and artist of the song shown.
- If you're using your phone, expand notifications at the top, then tap the song notification.

How do I use Now Playing to find songs I heard recently?

Open your phone's Settings app.
Tap Sound & vibration Now Playing.
Tap Now Playing history.
You get a list of songs that Now Playing has recently identified.
To share a song or listen to it in a music app, tap the song. On Pixel 3 and later, including Fold, you can also choose multiple songs to:
- Listen to on a music service
- Share
- Delete from your list

How can I get even more music?

Important: This feature is only available for Pixel 4 and later, including Fold.

Your phone can identify a lot of music automatically. If there are tracks that it doesn't have, you can search for them manually on Google with music search.

Open your phone's Settings app.
Tap Sound & vibration Now playing.
Turn on Show search button on lock screen.
If your phone can’t identify a song, you can search for it. To search for a song, on your lock screen, tap music search .

How do I Favorite a song?

Important: This feature is available for Pixel 3a and later, including Fold.

You can add a song that’s playing nearby to your Now Playing favorites list right from your lock screen.

From your lock screen, tap the music note next to the song title. Then, a heart is added to the music note. To remove the song from favorites, tap the music note again.

To review your favorite songs:

Open your phone's Settings app.
Tap Sound & vibration Now Playing.
Tap Now Playing history Favorites.
To remove a song from the favorites list, tap the heart .

How can I change where notifications appear?

If you don't want to get song notifications at the top of your screen, you can turn them off.

Open your phone's Settings app.
Tap Sound & vibration Now Playing Notifications.
Turn off Recognized Music Notifications. Song info still displays on your lock screen.

How does Now Playing work?

On all Pixel phones

When music plays nearby, your phone compares a few seconds of music to its on-device library to try to recognize the song. This processing happens on your phone and is private to you.

To recognize songs better, Now Playing collects some info, like the percentage of times Now Playing correctly recognizes music. Now Playing only collects this info if you have shared usage and diagnostics with Google. Learn how to update your usage & diagnostic settings.

On Pixel 4 and later (including Fold) with federated analytics

In Pixel 4 and later phones, use of the feature and the counts of songs recognized are aggregated using a privacy-preserving technology called federated analytics. This will be used to improve the Now Playing feature and its song database so it will recognize what’s playing more often. Google can never see what songs you listen to, just the most popular songs in different regions. Learn more about federated technology.

If you have shared usage and diagnostics with Google, counts of recognized songs are shared with Google. Learn how to update your usage & diagnostic settings.

If you turn on "Show search button on lock screen", each time you tap to search, Google gets a short, digital audio fingerprint to identify what's playing.