- Evidence of a Now Playing app found in Android code
- This would mean that the Pixel’s Now Playing feature would be moved to a dedicated app.
- This will likely lead to updates for this somewhat neglected tool.
Now Playing is a feature that’s been present on Pixel phones since the Google Pixel 2 series, but while it’s been a built-in feature all along, it looks like Google plans to give it a dedicated app.
This is according to 9to5Google, which found a string of code in a new version of Android System Intelligence that mentions a Now Playing app that you can “upgrade” to by downloading it from the Google Play Store.
On top of that, an icon for the Now Playing app had previously been unearthed, which you can see below.
So while Google hasn’t officially confirmed this change yet, it seems very likely that it will happen.
Right now, the Now Playing feature will work in the background on your Pixel phone to identify the songs you’re listening to, and you can then find those identified songs in the Now Playing section of your phone’s settings menu. It is a useful and non-intrusive feature, but it has some limitations and problems.
For one thing, having to dig through multiple menus in settings to find a list of identified songs isn’t ideal, and for another, your now-playing history doesn’t sync to a new device when you switch phones.
A possible update, but only for Pixels
Having a dedicated app could solve both problems and could make it easier for Google to introduce or improve other features as well. Again, none of that is confirmed, but we don’t see why Google would make Now Playing a dedicated app if it wasn’t planning to update the feature. Hopefully this will be a good change.
As for when we’ll see this app, 9to5Google speculates that it could land as part of the next Pixel feature drop in March.
However, if you were hoping that this move to an installable app would mean Now Playing would be available on devices other than Pixels, you’re probably out of luck, as Android Authority has investigated on its own and found signs that at least for now it will remain a Pixel-only feature.
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