The Google Pixel’s best feature finally has its own app, and it’s now my favorite part of my phone

Now Playing wasn’t one of the reasons I wanted to switch to Pixel. I knew about it and, aside from thinking, “Okay, so it’s an offline Shazam, whatever,” I didn’t give it much thought. Worse still, the feature was completely broken during the first few days of owning my Pixel 10 Pro, so I couldn’t even test it.

But then Google pushed the March Pixel Drop and fixed Now Playing by turning it into a standalone app just days after I got the phone. Fast-forward a few months, and Now Playing has become one of my favorite features on my Pixel. Here’s why.

Brand

Google

SoC

Google Tensor G5

The Pixel 10 Pro offers an upgrade over the base model with the powerful Google Tensor G5 chip, more RAM, and more storage (if you need it).

Now Playing is the silent song-name fetcher I didn’t know I needed

The best part of my lock screen

I love how fast Now Playing recognizes songs playing around me. Being an offline feature, it doesn’t need to contact servers and fetch song info over the internet. All processing is done locally on my phone, which lets me use it even when a song plays for only a few seconds.

A good example is Superstore, a TV show I’m currently watching. The show has short segues between scenes featuring mall music and weirdly funny situations that only last about 10 seconds or so. I often want to know what song is playing during these segues, so I regularly reach for my phone, tap the Now Playing lock screen button, and it delivers almost every single time.

Even when it only has a few seconds of a song to work with, Now Playing manages to recognize it 8/10 times. Even better, half the time the song name is already showing on the lock screen when I reach for my phone, since Now Playing runs in the background and activates as soon as it detects music playing nearby.

The feature is also handy when listening to in-game music. Recently, I’ve been playing Death Stranding 2, a game featuring a bunch of licensed music, and while the song title and artist are shown when a track plays for the first time, it’s much easier to just use Now Playing than manually search for it on Spotify, because Now Playing has Spotify integration, which I love.

When I hear a song I like, I want to add it to my Liked Songs playlist, check out the artist, or add the entire album to one of my “listen to” playlists (I’ve got more than a dozen of them, all neatly arranged by genre) since I’m an album-oriented listener (I’m old, I know). Having the “Listen on Spotify” button is super handy. I can just tap it, and I’m immediately taken to Spotify, where Now Playing has already searched for the song and listed the results.

The good news is that, despite being active in the background basically all the time, Now Playing is anything but a battery hog. Even when I’m binging Superstore, gaming or listening to music on my PC, or spending hours hanging out with friends in a bar or coffee shop with music playing in the background, it barely makes a dent.

Shazam offers more features, but I find Now Playing a superior experience

Better offline

Now, you might be thinking, “Why not just use Shazam?” But Now Playing is, at least to me, much better than its famous music identification cousin.

I loved Shazam when it first came out, but the app turned out to be a one-trick pony back in the late 2000s and early 2010s. After initially being impressed by it, I stopped using it and eventually deleted it from my phone a few years later. After revisiting the app for this article after about a decade and a half of not using it, I quickly realized just how different Now Playing is—and better for it.

Firstly, despite now being a standalone app, Now Playing is seamlessly integrated into the Pixel experience. It quietly runs in the background, always listening for music, and only appears on the lock screen when it detects something playing. On the other hand, Shazam’s always-on notification is always there, constantly taking up space on the lock screen and in the notification shade, which is less than ideal.

Now Playing also works offline, while Shazam requires an internet connection. It’s also much faster at recognizing songs, probably because it’s an offline feature. Even with Shazam’s always-on feature enabled, it would often fail to recognize songs playing during those brief Superstore segues.

Shazam has also gotten quite bloated since I last used it. I was a tad disappointed to see that the app now includes a bunch of menus and options, most of which are superfluous. It lists concerts (and lets you find tickets), recommends you playlists based on songs it has recognized, offers artist wallpapers for some reason, requires you to sign in to save the recognized song history, and packs other unnecessary features that muddy its main purpose of recognizing songs.

On the other hand, Now Playing is barebones, offering only a few features and options, along with just three screens: Now Playing, History, and Favorites. Its settings menu is also refreshingly lean; you only get three options, and that’s it.

The only thing Shazam does better is being able to recognize music playing on your phone from other apps, which is a very handy feature. But other than that, I find Now Playing superior in every way.

Brand

Google

SoC

Google Tensor G5

Display

6.3-inch Actua OLED, 20:9

RAM

12 GB RAM

Storage

128 GB / 256 GB

Battery

4970mAh

Looking to upgrade to a Pixel but not sure if you need all the bells and whistles of the more expensive models? You won’t be disappointed with the standard Pixel 10 model. Coming in striking colors, Gemini features, and seven years of updates, you can’t go wrong with this purchase.

Now Playing has quietly become one of my favorite features on my Pixel

I love original features that aren’t talked about in reviews but quietly become fan favorites, and Now Playing is one of them. After starting to use it daily, I’d have a hard time moving away from a Google phone because I’ve already found so much new music just from checking my Now Playing results, and because Shazam offers an inferior experience in most ways. While it would be silly to stay on Pixel just for Now Playing, it’s one of those features I’ll really miss if and when I switch to a different phone brand.