Your Pixel's Now Playing song discovery tool has undergone several updates in Android 12, making it more competitive with other music recognition services.

One of the major improvements for Now Playing on Google Pixel devices is the ability to favorite identified tracks and manually search for songs directly from the lock screen when the tool fails to recognize the music automatically. Combined with its offline music database, automatic song identification, and batch-editing capabilities, it has significantly improved in user appeal. Here’s a summary of how these features function.

Enable Now Playing in Settings

Unless Now Playing is pre-enabled on your Android device, you'll need to activate it manually, available for Google Pixel 2 and later models.

To enable it, navigate to Settings → Display → Lock screen → Now Playing.

Next, in the Now Playing preferences, flip the "Identify songs playing nearby" switch. Your phone might require some time to download the song database locally. Once done, it can identify music without an internet connection using that database.

For privacy protection, the automatic recognition process does not send audio or background conversations to Google. Now Playing employs privacy-preserving analytics.

— Google

Personalize Your Now Playing Alerts

Now Playing provides several customization options, starting with alerts for newly detected songs. Tapping "Notifications" in the Now Playing settings leads you to the Android System Intelligence page, where you can toggle the "Recognized Music Notifications" switch.

This switch estimates the average number of notifications your phone might send daily based on past usage. When active, detected songs will appear on your lock screen and in notifications when unlocked.

Enable the Now Playing Search Button

In the Now Playing settings, there’s a switch labeled "Show search button on lock screen." Enabling this switch allows you to manually "identify songs playing nearby that aren't recognized by your device."

Once activated, you can tap the small music search button at the bottom of your screen to manually detect a song that wasn’t identified automatically. An internet connection is required as your phone will send Google a "short, digital audio fingerprint" to identify the music. This feature debuted in November’s updates for Google Pixel 4 and newer models.

Note that the music search button differs from the "Search a song" option in the Google app’s audio detection feature. The former integrates with Now Playing, whereas the latter merely performs a Google search for the identified music.

View Your Now Playing History

The final option in the Now Playing settings is "Now Playing history." Tapping it displays all the songs your phone detected automatically or manually.

You can also create a shortcut for the history on your home screen. To do so, tap the vertical ellipsis at the top, then "Add to Home Screen," and position it where desired. Alternatively, you can access your history by tapping a recently identified song on your lock screen (unlock your phone to proceed).

On the Now Playing history screen, identified music appears in reverse chronological order, with newer entries at the top. Your phone can store thousands of songs here, and this data won’t affect your phone’s internal storage limits.

I could trace back to May 2021 (when I acquired my current phone) and view a detailed list of the songs my phone detected. You’ll know the time of day it was detected and the number of song detections in a given month if there were many. Tapping a group expands its full list of songs.

Batch-Edit Songs from Your History (Optional)

From the history, you can long-press a song title or tap the music note icon next to a song to select it, then choose others in the

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