Google broke the feature last year, and it's taken months of complaints to get this far.
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Google will finally fix awesome (but broken) song detection feature for Pixels
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
It's great how Google randomly breaks features that go months (years?) without being fixed. For at least 6 months Gboard would refuse to suggest my email address when filling out fields and that feature seems to have just come back in the last few days.
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Given every support interaction I've ever had with Google, I'm pleasantly surprised this is getting fixed, instead of being told "there is no SLA on this feature/API/product working".
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This is one of those features I every now and again think about since my switch to iPhone a few years ago. I really miss it.
It’s a minor thing but I would have been really pissed that this was broken for so long.
It’s a minor thing but I would have been really pissed that this was broken for so long.
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I don't know anything but couldn't it be updated with a Play Services update, outside of the OS update cadence?
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Google being Google, just watch....this will get fixed 48 hours before the announcement that "the Now Playing feature has been deprecated in favour of <insert similar Google app missing features people actually use here> and will be removed March 30th, 2025".
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I noticed that change too. Lots of stuff randomly breaking on the phone.
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Didn't know this was a feature. Enabled and also seems to work fine in the background on the lock screen on my p7. Given the multitude of app/play services versions and hardware, I'm not shocked that something is always broken for a subset.
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On the P9Pro. This seems to work on and off for me but it usually works. I'm wondering if it's completely broken for some folks?
Edit: I use it quite a bit and it's definitely annoying when it doesn't work.
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It's intermittent for me. It always works if I go into the menu, but it always used to show on the lock screen and now it's just. . . a quarter of the time?
Still, I'd rather they fix driving mode in Maps. I probably spend two hours driving during the work day, and my texts stopped being read aloud about two months ago.
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I don't know if it's everyone, but I think it's a lot. I use multiple Pixel phones, and I think I've only seen Now Playing work on the lock screen a handful of times in recent months.
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It broke for me around when they depreciated Assistant for gemni, so i had assumed it was tied to Assistant. Some times it still shows a song name on my lock screen, but it's not consistent or reliable. when i try to have it listen to songs from the search bar it fails, but when i do the same in google music, it works.
Consistantly Google.
Consistantly Google.
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It solves the same problem as Shazam and similar tools, but it works constantly in the background so you don't have to think about it. The fact that it doesn't need internet access is also pretty neat.
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While it doesn't seem to be completely broken for me, I have to say there are so many obvious bugs in Android 15 that I wonder if anyone tests or pays attention to beta bug reports.
VPN status in notifications... broken, i can not make sense at all of what is going on there
Extra Dim... does not always reflect the actual state, and clicking it might do nothing
...could be just me, but the amount of little weird broken things is noticeable.
VPN status in notifications... broken, i can not make sense at all of what is going on there
Extra Dim... does not always reflect the actual state, and clicking it might do nothing
...could be just me, but the amount of little weird broken things is noticeable.
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Thank God it's working for him and broken for so many others. Some work some don't I guess.
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Indeed, it works when it does. Not reliable enough to be 100%, but hey!
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Pixel 8 Pro here, and also has been working fine. We often have Pandora or Youtube Music in the background and whenever I am curious to know the song a simple tap on the screen can tell me wherever I am at.
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When it's broken in hardware, oh it's totally fixable in software! Seems to be the Google way but you never really know.
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That must feeling like when you're about to do a tech demo of something, and of course it doesn't work in front of a big audience. But when you're alone, yup it's all good...most of the time.
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J.C. Helios
Ars Scholae Palatinae
This is one of the things I missed after switching away from Pixel, but luckily the default Google app has a 1x1 widget (a.k.a., an "icon") called Song Search that's good enough, albeit not on the lock screen.
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Yes it's been broken for months - you can still find songs by hitting the "microphone" symbol from starting screen and it will search.
Thing is , google also has broken the indexing. A song originally from the 60's covered in the 80's and 2010's, will match the song in 2010, even if it is the original 1960's song!!!!
This is a form of "digital obsolescence" - keep newer stuff and forget the old (pretty much like Hollywood...)
Thing is , google also has broken the indexing. A song originally from the 60's covered in the 80's and 2010's, will match the song in 2010, even if it is the original 1960's song!!!!
This is a form of "digital obsolescence" - keep newer stuff and forget the old (pretty much like Hollywood...)
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I can definitively answer that it's Android 15, not Play Services.
I have a Pixel 8 Pro that I've refused to update/downgrade to Android 15, and Now Playing has never broken for me.
(I refuse to accept the sideloaded app permission restrictions until I need to upgrade this phone .... especially since I use Advanced Protection on my Google account, I already need to ADB an APK over to sideload something. If I've taken the trouble to download a package, install drivers, and type in console commands to install something I'm OK to take the permissions risk kthx)
I have a Pixel 8 Pro that I've refused to update/downgrade to Android 15, and Now Playing has never broken for me.
(I refuse to accept the sideloaded app permission restrictions until I need to upgrade this phone .... especially since I use Advanced Protection on my Google account, I already need to ADB an APK over to sideload something. If I've taken the trouble to download a package, install drivers, and type in console commands to install something I'm OK to take the permissions risk kthx)
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It's news to me that this is broken; it's been working on my Pixel 9 as recently as yesterday
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In this example is it Google's advertising revenue team at play?
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It's been so intermittent on my 4a that I added it to the window shade so I could actually use it on demand, and not just hope it would detect a song. Android 13 so maybe this bug is older than indicated? Or it was a regression from a fix after A13?
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Adding my n=1, this feature has been broken for me for awhile, despite holding off on Android 15.
This suggests to me that it was indeed a Play Services issue that broke it, rather than the Android 15 update.
Good to know I wasn't too crazy. I have bad luck with bugs in software, so I tend to shrug and not spend too much time on minor issues. Apparently this one was not just me.
This suggests to me that it was indeed a Play Services issue that broke it, rather than the Android 15 update.
Good to know I wasn't too crazy. I have bad luck with bugs in software, so I tend to shrug and not spend too much time on minor issues. Apparently this one was not just me.
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Umm, it's not actually broken though? At least it's not for everybody.
I know that because I have had it on and never noticed it stop working. I was talking about how cool a feature it is with somebody a couple of weeks ago and I demoed it for them, so I know it was working then. And I just fired up a song on my PC and my phone detected it a few seconds later.
I wonder if it's only broken on some devices or in some regions or something? I'm using Android 15 on a Pixel 9.
I know that because I have had it on and never noticed it stop working. I was talking about how cool a feature it is with somebody a couple of weeks ago and I demoed it for them, so I know it was working then. And I just fired up a song on my PC and my phone detected it a few seconds later.
I wonder if it's only broken on some devices or in some regions or something? I'm using Android 15 on a Pixel 9.
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It’s especially relevant if you’re a GOOG shareholder: their reputation for not fixing bugs and orphaning features comes up in sales of things like GCP more than their mismanagers would have you believe.
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Never noticed it not working on my Pixel 7 with Android 15, but everything is better in Canada 
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Glad to see this bug finally being looked at, it still works mostly on my side rn, but the manual search has truly been borked for a bit which is a shame since I use it to grab stuff I liked out and about or passively collecting songs for my lastfm scrobbles which is truly the killer feature for me. Always fun to come back from a music festival or concert and see songs that were played show up, even if it only grabbed like 1/3 of em due to the volume or mixing but has always been one of the selling points for pixel next to the camera and stockish software for me.
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Glad to see that some here are willing to call out this nonsense! The echo chamber regarding certain subjects is killing my brain cells. Like, I get that you think Trump getting elected sucks, but can we not just have an honest chat about the subject without the same 12 insults being repeated thousands of times? Of those who have complained:
1) who used the feature well enough to not fall into the “worked for me, everything is fine” bucket. Among those:
2) Who turned on airplane mode and did a reboot just to troubleshoot?
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I am new to the Pixel family with the Pro Fold 2 - I didn't even know this feature existed. I will check it out!
Edit: It seems to work fine after brief testing. Perhaps there is a problem but I'm not seeing it.
Edit: It seems to work fine after brief testing. Perhaps there is a problem but I'm not seeing it.
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From what I understand, it works like Shazam but is always on and doesn’t need an internet connection. It doesn’t solve any problems, it’s just a tool for identifying music. It would be useful for people who hear a song and want to know what the song is so they can listen to it later or purchase it. When people heard a song on the radio in the olden days, the station would normally identify the song and artist which is exactly what this feature would do in modern times.
I hope this clears up any confusion you may still have.
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