Google's Pixel smartphones come with features that you can't get anywhere else, and a personal favorite of mine is the company's "Now Playing" feature. It will identify music playing around you by comparing audio to a database stored on device, providing you with a list of tracks that surrounded you throughout the day. Now it's getting an update that adds a Now Playing Summary (very likely before Google could even add it), backups, multiple database support, and more.

Developer Kieron Quinn, also known as Quinny899 on our forums, is the person that managed to port Google's "Now Playing" to other Android smartphones in the form of a Magisk/Xposed module called "Ambient Music Mod", though later found a non-root solution to bring it to all devices. It makes use of Shizuku, which is a way to grant ADB-level permissions to any app on your smartphone. You can choose a national database that best suits your music tastes, and the app will do the rest in the background. Selecting an Irish one will mean that it identifies a lot more niche Irish music, whereas the same will happen if you download other databases, too.

Ambient Music Mod v2.2.1 adds a ton of new features

Ambient Music Mod is a personal favorite mod of mine to put on any device, and I've already set it up on my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. The latest version is version 2.2.1, and it has a lot of new features. The changelog is below:

  • Enabled Now Playing Summary in the Now Playing History, a new feature that's not even on Pixels yet, which displays statistics about your listening habits including genre, artists, and timings from the last 30 days (configurable down to 1 day up to 365 days)
  • NNFPv3 (the updated model) is now enabled on all devices except legacy armv7. Google have switched Pixels over to using it, indicating music databases for the legacy model may stop being updated at some point. Please note that due to format changes, a database update will be forced after updating, and any saved On Demand recognitions will be removed. This is unavoidable, and Google has already done this on Pixel devices with official Now Playing
  • Added experimental option to download extra country databases (up to two)
  • Added option to periodically (daily/weekly/monthly) back up to a specified location
  • Improved track list viewer speed by caching track info in Ambient Music Mod, rather than loading it from the Now Playing database every time. This will increase the storage footprint of Ambient Music Mod, but you can clear the app's cache if it becomes an issue.
  • Added a track info viewer to the track list, displaying all available information for a track on one page, including links to play tracks in the database
  • Added option to edit and delete stored On Demand tracks
  • Updated database downloader, and implemented a system whereby the system Job Scheduler (which is relied on to schedule downloads) gets told to expedite downloads where possible. This should improve the speed of database downloads.
  • Improved Lock Screen detection logic
  • Fixed an issue where some switches in the app behaved differently depending on whether the text or the switch handle was pressed
  • Fixed an issue where notifications for Now Playing were being re-enabled after being disabled by the user on some devices

Hands on with Ambient Music Mod v2.2: Now Playing Summary and extra settings

When you use Ambient Music Mod, you'll notice a few key changes surrounding your track history. It still works the same way, but there's a new "Summary" tab that shows you your most detected genres, artists, and even how many songs you've identified in whatever time period you've selected.

There are extra settings too, and one of the most interesting ones is the ability to add multiple countries to your track database. While I listen to a listen of smaller Irish artists (which Now Playing can identify), I also listen to some smaller American and British artists, too. I can download both of those databases and subsequently identify tracks that my device previously wouldn't.

If you're wondering from what database your music is being identified, you can look up a track in the downloaded music databases and see what country's list it's associated with. Searching artists like "U2" will show me the Irish database, whereas an artist like Nelly is pulled from the global database.

For smartphones that support On Demand recognition, you'll also be able to search for songs in your Now Playing that were picked up by an On Demand request simply by searching "ondemand". There are other changes too, and those include improved track viewer list speed, the option to edit and delete cached On Demand tracks, periodic backups (daily, weekly, or monthly), and more.

Download Ambient Music Mod v2.2.1

The Now Playing feature was never pushed to AOSP as it's a proprietary Google Pixel feature, so Kieron had to reverse engineer and go through tons of challenges to make it available for non-Google devices. He detailed the process in his blog. Give it a read if you are curious to know about everything behind the scenes.

Head to the GitHub link for the codebase and more information on how the mod works. You can also participate in the discussion, report a bug, or request a new feature by posting in the forum thread linked below.

Ambient Music Mod: GitHub Repo || XDA Discussion Thread