Find out what music is playing near you

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

• Depending on where you want to get notifications, you can see them if your phone is locked or when you're using your phone.
• To find out more about a song, if your phone is locked, tap the notification twice. If you're using your phone, expand notifications at the top, then tap the song notification.
• Pixel (2016) can’t identify songs.

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.

Get song info automatically

Important: Pixel (2016) can’t identify songs.

1. Open your phone's Settings app.
2. Tap Sound and vibration Now Playing.
3. Turn on Identify songs playing nearby.
   • Make sure that your phone is charged and connected to Wi-Fi.
4. Wait a few minutes while your phone downloads the song database.
5. After the download has finished, songs playing around you will automatically be identified and shown on your lock screen.
6. To learn more about a song:
   • If your phone is locked, tap the song name.
   • If you're using your phone, expand notifications at the top, then tap the song notification.
     

Get even more music with music search

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.

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

1. Open your phone's Settings app.
2. Tap Sound and vibration Now Playing.
3. Turn on Show search button on lock screen.
4. 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 .

Find songs that you heard recently

1. Open your phone's Settings app.
2. Tap Sound and vibration Now Playing.
   • Make sure that 'Show songs on lock screen' is on.
3. Tap Now Playing History.
4. If you’ve listened to any songs, you get a list of songs that have played.
5. To share a song or listen to it in a music app, tap the song. On Pixel 3 and later, you can also choose multiple songs to:
   • Listen to on a music service
   • Share
   • Delete from your list

Favourite a song that you heard

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 favourites list directly 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 favourites, tap the music note again.

To review your favourite songs:

1. Open your phone's Settings app.
2. Tap Sound and vibration Now Playing.
3. Tap Now Playing history Favourites.
4. To remove a song from the favourites list, tap the heart .

Change where notifications appear

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

1. Open your phone's Settings app.
2. Tap Sound and vibration Now Playing Notifications.
3. Turn off Recognised music notifications. Song info still displays on your lock screen.

How Now Playing works

On all Pixel phones

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

To recognise songs better, Now Playing collects some info, like the percentage of times Now Playing correctly recognises 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 recognised 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 that it will recognise 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 recognised songs are shared with Google. Learn how to update your usage and 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.