Enhanced Now Playing on Pixel rolls out default music player

Google’s Pixel series has a fantastic update coming for those fond of the Now Playing feature. Now Playing allows Pixel devices to constantly listen out for music in the background and on-device. If it hears a song, it’ll display the name of the song in the Now Playing widget and the Now Playing History.

The update to Now Playing includes setting a default music player app if you want to listen to any of the songs in your Now Playing history.

It’s also adding support for album art. Google announced this with the most recent Pixel Drop, but the update now hits Pixel devices. Album art is part of the new “enhanced Now Playing,” which connects to Google Cloud to help identify songs that are hard for Now Playing to recognize. If you toggle on enhanced Now Playing, you’ll start to see album art for newly listened-to songs.

9to5Google is reporting that they have started seeing the default player option, so it’s likely to hit devices sooner rather than later.

This will hit Pixel 6 devices and newer.

Source: 9to5Google