Pixel Ambient Services

Google LLC

About this app

When music is playing nearby, it will automatically show up on your lock screen. With just a tap, save the song to a playlist or open it in your favourite apps. This works in real time; knowledge about thousands of songs has been built into your phone. This means no audio is ever stored on your phone or sent to Google to identify music, and it can even work offline.

Ratings and reviews

I'm unable to purchase songs that I like from the Google Play Music store that are identified by this app. there is no button that will take you to the song or album so you can purchase or add to your wish list. asking the assistant and the hitting the buy button just brings up a blank screen. it's a minor inconvenience, but it seems intuitive.

I play music all day long on the radio, and the "Now Playing" app doesn't pick any of it up. Whenever I'm in my car I play CDs and the app doesn't pick that up either. I've got it enabled on my phone so why isn't it keeping a history of the music I listen to? I have tried several so-called fixes including turning off battery optimization, but nothing has worked. It's a worthless app to me.

The "Now Playing History" function is buried in the Android settings. There's no app shortcut in the app drawer. Adding the action shortcut to a home screen doesn't persist across reboots. That's my primary complaint. It does a decent job of detecting regionally-appropriate music; a worse job of identifying soundtracks or international music.

What's new

• Better recovery from system errors
• Better handling of multi-user mode