Google to ‘Enhance Now Playing’ on Pixel, tweaks homescreen icon

The Pixel’s background song recognition feature has not been updated in ages, but Google is now getting ready to “Enhance Now Playing.” 

About APK Insight: In this “APK Insight” post, we’ve decompiled the latest version of an application that Google uploaded to the Play Store. When we decompile these files (called APKs, in the case of Android apps), we’re able to see various lines of code within that hint at possible future features. Keep in mind that Google may or may not ever ship these features, and our interpretation of what they are may be imperfect. We’ll try to enable those that are closer to being finished, however, to show you how they’ll look in case that they do ship. With that in mind, read on.

V.13 of Android System Intelligence for the Pixel 9 details “Enhance Now Playing”: 

The “Show search button on lock screen” setting has been updated to “Enhance Now Playing” and now also uses Google services to add album artwork to songs.

Currently, the Now Playing list uses a generic music note icon next to the song name and artist. It’s unclear if artwork will be added to your entire history or just new discoveries going forward.

Meanwhile, Now Playing’s cloud search capability going forward will use “Google Search to identify songs not recognized by your device.” Song Search, which recently got a Quick Settings Tile and new app shortcut icon, in the Google app offers features like “Hum to Search” and should be the company’s latest song recognition technology.

Google explains how:

• Now Playing recognizes music using a song database stored on your device. To protect your privacy, the automatic recognition process never sends audio or background conversations to Google. Now Playing uses privacy-preserving analytics.
• If you turn on “Enhance Now Playing”, Google receives a short, digital audio fingerprint to identify what’s playing.
  • Because Now Playing is protected by Android’s Private Compute Core, it does not show a mic indicator and will not appear on your Privacy dashboard.

This new “Enhance Song Search” preference is not yet live in Settings app > Now Playing. There is a server-side component to this rollout.

What’s live with today with V.13 of ASI is how Google renamed the app shortcut from “Now Playing history” to just “Now Playing.” As such, the “…” has been removed for a cleaner look. (Like other app shortcuts, there’s still no Themed icon.) Finally, the square for artwork features more rounded corners.

Thanks to JEB Decompiler, from which some APK Insight teardowns benefit.