One of the most useful hidden features in Google’s Pixel phones is the “Now Playing” function. When enabled, it can detect any music playing nearby, and display song information on your lock screen. Unfortunately, users are reporting that the feature has been broken for months, with no news on when that might change.
Some Pixel owners have been discussing this issue at great length over on Reddit, with the original poster expressing confusion as to why their Pixel 6 was only able to recognize two songs throughout a four-hour road trip.
Others have chimed in with their own experiences, including noting that the Pixel 9 Pro suffers the same issues — "horrendously bad compared to earlier iterations." Another lamented the fact that Now Playing has lost its reliability, and "doesn’t show up half the time," plus a few choice words we can’t repeat here.
In response to this, one Redditor mentioned that the Now Playing icon is often missing from the lock screen, but songs are still being listed in the history. I’ve never used Now Playing, instead preferring to be old-school with my music identification — opting for apps like Shazam.
But I did give Now Playing a go on my Pixel 9 Pro. It mostly worked, but I will caveat with the fact that it wasn’t perfectly seamless. Not to mention the fact I have no idea how good Now Playing was in the past, which Reddit users clearly do.
What I found was that Now Playing was able to identify big name artists and songs, but struggled with smaller ones — including cover bands that are all the rage on my YouTube feed.
So while my Pixel could identify the likes of AC/DC or The Weeknd, it got a number of smaller YouTubers completely wrong. Assuming it was able to identify them at all. Now Playing was also pretty slow to update, and needed a good 30-60 seconds of music to update the lockscreen.
Granted I’ve only just set the feature up, and only just downloaded Now Playing’s music database to my phone. From what people on various Reddit threads are saying, the problems only arose after a period of frequent use. Whether Now Playing simply gives up after a while, or if I’m just on a lucky streak, isn't clear.
Android Authority notes that Google did release an update to Android System Intelligence to fix some of the problems last month — promising "bug fixes and improvements to Pixel Now Playing Album Art feature."
However, that doesn’t seem to have fixed the problem. Other users have recommended clearing the System Intelligence cache, which can be done in Settings > Apps > All Apps > Android System Intelligence > Storage & Cache > Clear cache.
If that doesn’t work, then there isn’t much more that can be done until Google tackles the problem with a future update. In the meantime you may just need to rely on other music identification apps like Shazam, or by asking Google Assistant.
More from Tom's Guide
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
